The window of opportunity brought by the COVID-19 pandemic: an ill wind blows for digitalisation leapfrogging

ABSTRACT

We analyse how the COVID-19 pandemic crisis created the window of opportunity (WOP) in the digital industry and digital applications. These led to the leapfrogging of digital transformation in China. This was considered a major contribution to the pandemic recovery in early to mid-2020. By exploring this phenomenon, we examine alternatives for sustainable development during such turbulent circumstances mediating the destruction arisen from the crisis. We unveil the mechanisms that reveal the large-scale digitalisation that emerged as part of the response to managing the crisis. We find that during this crisis in China, the WOPs from policy, technology and demand perspectives facilitated the leapfrogging of the digital transformation in numerous social and economic areas. More importantly, we also discover that the WOPs are unevenly distributed among firms, time, and locations. Based on these results, we put forth that the COVID-19 pandemic brings a relative window of opportunity (RWOP) to society, impacting industries and firms. However, these impacts are disproportionately distributed. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the first studies to illustrate how a social crisis leads to WOPs enhancing digital transformation. Furthermore, this also ultimately provided a coping mechanism to deal with the pandemic.