Editorial: COVID-19: The Unexpected and Disruptive Event that Will Radically Shake Up and Change the World as We Know it

Abstract

The author of this editorial article, published in the fourth issue of the Risk Governance and Control: Financial Markets & Institutions Journal (Volume 10, Issue 4, 2020), aims to provide a summary overview of the Journal's main contributions and a brief analysis of the most relevant emerging digital business trends in the financial sector. The rapid growth and the widespread diffusion of the digital business models seem to have received a sharp acceleration during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to social distancing and mobility restrictions, changing consumer shopping preferences, and the growing trend of working remotely. In this article, the author also recognizes the exceptional and unprecedented policy response undertaken by governments, central banks, supranational, and multilateral institutions in order to help mitigate the health, social, and economic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis and to support a coordinated, sustainable, and resilient economic recovery. The underlying argument of this article, supported by empirical evidences in the industries, is that the pandemic event, despite its severe health and social consequences, is becoming also a major catalyst of accelerated business and economic transformation towards the adoption of innovative and more digitally-driven business models in all industries. Among these innovations, some of the most relevant ones includes: AI-based innovations and industry 4.0 solutions, digital transformation, blockchain-based technologies, fintech and embedded finance innovations, and environmentally-friendly and socially-inclusive economic models. As a consequence of the disruptive pandemic event, firms are in fact, reinventing, redesigning, and reconfiguring their business models, value chains, and value networks relying increasingly more on digital and cloud-based technologies and on remote working, but also completely rethinking their cost structure, operations, supply chains, and customer experience journey in order to increase productivity, speed of innovation, profitability, customer knowledge through Big Data and Data Science, and to achieve also ambitious inclusion and sustainability goals. In summary, this article, lead to the conclusion that the dramatic event of the COVID-19 pandemic is a severe health crisis that will likely leave lasting economic and social scars across the world in the years to come, but it will be probably also the catalyst of a brighter, more sustainable, and inclusive future, as the latest emerging trends would seem to indicate, although a high level of uncertainty about potential downside risk still persist in the markets, which might bring further disruption in severe adverse scenario.