Abstract
This paper presents some concepts and reflections on the prospects of SME productive systems that try to cope with the crisis provoked by the Covid-19, to reposition for the post-emergency, and to increase the readiness towards impending digital and green challenges. It focuses on the impacts of the emergency on a frame of opportunities and threats for such systems in Italy. An effective and progressive governance would be needed to overthrow barriers to change and reduce systemic uncertainties that hinder productive investments. The governance contemplates the collaboration among various types of societal and business actors open to progressive local path transformations within multi-scalar networks. An effective governance requires a supportive national strategic planning as well. The recovery and resilience plan of the Italian government within Next Generation EU should consider such support to increase the possibility of successful digital and green transformation in SMEs productive systems within new paths of territorial development.
Highlights
A violent and prolonged shock may imply a catastrophic crisis for a socioeconomic system, with enduring impacts even after the end of the shock itself
But what nature will those impacts have in the medium-long term? Is that possible that such reaction will address, with the recovery from the crisis, a fruitful path transformation? would the reaction possibly aim at correcting pre-existing structural deficiencies that the system was suffering even before the shock? Many could advocate such type of coupling as a desirable exercise of collective rationality, especially if the deficiencies have revealed themselves more clearly as crucial weaknesses during the crisis triggered by the shock
Was the world going towards unsustainable environmental impacts, social inequalities, and global monopolistic power? Fine, the investments needed to recover from the crisis should be employed to push a wave of green renewal, societal healing, and entrepreneurial renaissance
Summary
A violent and prolonged shock may imply a catastrophic crisis for a socioeconomic system, with enduring impacts even after the end of the shock itself. The investments needed to recover from the crisis should be employed to push a wave of green renewal, societal healing, and entrepreneurial renaissance Such solutions would feature collective rationality within paths of sociotechnical transformation. I would assume that windows of opportunity for a transition featuring collective rationality enlarge if the solutions ground on evolutionary processes that: a) Were already emergent before the shock, expressing clusters of interests, technologies, public goods, social and market needs within new socio-technical niches (Geels, 2002); b) Have shown clear potentialities to expand even within the difficult conditions engendered by the shock and the crisis, perhaps enjoying the access to resources made redundant by the temporary weakening of some inefficient solutions and some monopolistic positions of the old order (Bellandi & Santini, forthcoming)
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