From Business Model Stagnation to Pivot Agility: A Post-Pandemic Study of Digital Transformation in SMEs

• Billy Elly

  Lautech

  Author

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed profound structural vulnerabilities among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), forcing many to confront business model stagnation or perish. While digital transformation has been widely promoted as a recovery strategy, the precise mechanisms through which digital technology adoption translates into organizational agility and successful business model pivoting remain underexplored, particularly at scale and across heterogeneous SME contexts. This study addresses this gap by leveraging a cross-national dataset of 491,636 SME technology adoption records to predict organizational agility outcomes using machine learning techniques. The purpose is to identify which categories of digital technologies most strongly predict pivot agility and to develop a validated predictive framework for SME digitalization strategy. Using Random Forest, XGBoost, and ensemble models with cross-validation, the study finds that production technologies (automation, digital infrastructure) are substantially stronger predictors of agility than consumption technologies (customer-facing tools), with the Random Forest model achieving a test R² of 0.6249. These findings challenge prevailing assumptions about the primacy of e-commerce platforms and suggest that foundational digital capabilities constitute the critical infrastructure for pivot agility. The study contributes a replicable predictive framework and offers actionable guidance for SME leaders and policymakers prioritizing digital investment.

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Copyright (c) 2026 Billy Elly (Author)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.