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BFJ
123,10
3358
Received 16 November 2020
Revised 8 December 2020
21 April 2021
Accepted 22 April 2021
British Food Journal
Vol. 123 No. 10, 2021
pp. 3358-3390
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0007-070X
DOI 10.1108/BFJ-11-2020-1037
COVID-19 as an entrepreneurship,
innovation, digitization and
digitalization accelerator:
Spanish Internet domains
registration analysis
Sorin Gavrila Gavrila and Antonio de Lucas Ancillo
Facultad de Ciencias Economicas Empresariales y Turismo,
Universidad de Alcala de Henares, Alcala de Henares, Spain
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to comprehend and determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on
business organizations and society, together with its relationship to entrepreneurship, innovation, digitization
or digital transformation, by means of analysis of the Spanish Internet domains registration data set.
Design/methodology/approach – Following existing literature regarding time series analysis, the authors
have designed a SARIMA methodology involving the forecasting of a non-COVID-19 data set from the
available data and compared it to the existing COVID-19 data set in order to validate the formulated hypothesis.
Findings – The COVID-19 pandemic was found to be an unfortunate accelerator, regarding entrepreneurship
and innovation as a digitization and digital transformation lever, with the results of the Internet domain
registration analysis as a reliable indicator.
Originality/value – This research confirms the existence of new non-invasive approaches to complementary
information, such as Internet domain registration analysis, that could serve as an early and quick indicator of
innovation and entrepreneurship initiatives within business activities.
Keywords COVID-19 pandemic, Entrepreneurship and innovation, Digitization and digital transformation,
Internet domain registration, Business resilience, Business opportunities
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Society has been taken by surprise by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which inevitably
altered the entire behavior of the economy, society, work and lifestyles as a whole, changing
consumers’ habits by destroying existing ones or creating new ones, and leading organizations
toward an accelerated digital transition, ahead of all forecasted and planned digital agendas
(MINCOTUR, 2019, 2020), forcing them to innovate and take action in order to survive.
This research is motivated by the Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2020) regarding
economic growth, industry and innovation, where the main objective is to study the effects of
the COVID-19 pandemic on business innovation and entrepreneurship initiatives, the latter
being understood as initiatives taken either by individuals or internally within an
organization’s strategic planning, also known as corporate entrepreneurship (Arz, 2017;
Demirkan et al., 2019; Hanci-Donmez and Karacay, 2019). This is studied within a wide range
of areas affected by the pandemic, such as ecopreneurs, organic entrepreneurship,
sustainable entrepreneurship, gastronomic tourism, social entrepreneurship, rural
entrepreneurship development, and sectors such as the organic food industry, farming
industry or organic businesses. However, despite the high interest and expectations
generated by this area of interest, due to the lack of segmentation information within the data
Declarations of interest: None
sets, the research has been focused on an analysis of the global business environment, COVID-19 as
covering both micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and large organizations, as an EIDaD
detailed within the identified limitations section.
This leads to multiple hypotheses regarding the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on
accelerator
businesses, especially for food-related ones: on the one hand the pandemic lockdown has
paralyzed all activities (Carlsson-Szlezak et al., 2020; Wren-Lewis, 2020), and therefore
organizations have halted all of their production, commercial and innovation processes;
however, on the other hand, organizations have been forced to accelerate their innovation and 3359
entrepreneurship activities (Heinonen and Strandvik, 2020).
A further gap has been identified, as the existing literature provides information
regarding multiple ratios (Bahcall, 2019; Ghobakhloo, 2020; Honjo and Nakamura, 2020;
Inacio Junior et al., 2020; Kraus et al., 2019; Rachinger et al., 2019), such as entrepreneurship
ratios, innovation ratios, digitization or digital transformation ratios, some of them obtained
using quantitative methodologies while some others from qualitative research, where a big
majority are composite ratios based on the analysis and correlation of constructs that require
multiple inputs and data sets increasing their complexity, analysis time and interpretation.
This consequently leads to a delay between the facts and observations in the literature,
causing a major information gap. Due to the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic has paralyzed
academic and private research activities (FAO, 2020; Kuckertz et al., 2020), during the
lockdown there was a complete blackout of information about the organizations’ overall
situation regarding the actions taken in order to survive the activity closures.
In addition, an extensive revision of the available literature regarding the organizations’
entrepreneurship, innovation, digitization and digitalization status, together with
COVID-19’s impact on society, has been made, especially for food-related sectors, leading
in practice to the pursuit of additional complementary information that could serve as an
early indicator of innovation and entrepreneurship initiatives within business activities
that could help individuals, organizations and governments not only to take better
decisions (Ashraf, 2020), but also to act in a faster and more proactive manner in terms of
strategic planning, investments and financing, as well as economic policies and credit
options.
Methodology: In order to validate the proposed hypotheses, an ARIMA/SARIMA
(autoregressive integrated moving average / seasonal variation) (Box et al., 1994; Box and
Jenkins, 1968) methodology was put in place, following the existing related literature
regarding time series analysis (Asteriou et al., 2016; H
akon, 2019; Luis and Rafael, 2020;
Luyao et al., 2020; Pevehouse and Brozek, 2008; Rahul et al., 2019), involving the forecasting of
a non-COVID-19 data set out of the available data and comparing it to the existing COVID-19
data set.
The authors have selected the “.es” Internet domain registration names, published on a
monthly basis since 2007 by the Spanish Red.es public entity, part of the Ministry of Energy,
Tourism and the Digital Agenda (MAETD, 2020). This contains raw data regarding the
accumulated number of active domains, monthly added domains, monthly cancelled domains
and geographical regions where the domains were registered, among other statistical
information. The analyzed samples were limited from January 2013 to September 2020, to
avoid the figures being affected by other events such as economic recession or smartphone
popularity, making a total of a 93-month period to be used in a multiple stage analysis
process.
Structure: The research includes an introduction to the identified research gaps found by
the authors in the existing available literature. These are further portrayed within the
theoretical framework, focusing on three major blocks, considered as highly relevant for the
current organizations’ status: general business activity closure, survival strategies and
entrepreneurship initiatives, and e-commerce explosion. The third section overviews the
BFJ methodology employed, explaining the research model and the data set sample
123,10 characteristics, while the fourth section provides the applied analysis steps followed by
the authors, to obtain the results. Finally, in the conclusion section, the theoretical and
practical implications are discussed, together with the identified limitations and proposed
future lines of research to follow.

3360 2. Theoretical framework and literature review

What is already known: The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly turned from a global health crisis to
a major economic and social crisis affecting society as a whole (Carlsson-Szlezak et al., 2020;
Wren-Lewis, 2020), altering consumers’ habits, making them more unpredictable than ever
(Pastore, 2020) and putting enormous pressure on local businesses that, in addition to
outstanding debts and financial difficulties (Syriopoulos, 2020), now have to face additional
e-commerce-based competitors, as shown under the theoretical model framework (Figure 1).
Some survival strategies and entrepreneurship initiatives were already included within
the business continuity plan; however, new unforeseen events have arisen such as (1)
working remotely, where the COVID-19 pandemic has completely changed the working
environment (Ahorsu et al., 2020; Shader, 2020) and teleworking (Song and Gao, 2019); (2) the
impact of digitalization as resilience, as it provides potential for new sustainable economic
models, allowing the economy to recover and to be more digital-focused, competitive and
resilient for endurance of subsequent crises (Deloitte, 2020a); and (3) other business
opportunities that benefit society from the innovation and knowledge generated (Crecente-
Romero et al., 2019; Sarabia et al., 2020).
The reports prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (ONTSI, 2018, 2019, 2020) indicate that online
presence, social network presence or e-commerce actions was not considered as a core
business priority. However, following the most recent technological reports (McKinsey
Digital, 2020; UNCTAD, 2020), the COVID-19 lockdown measures and social distancing have
led organizations toward an increase of their digital presence, such as websites or social
networks, and e-commerce activity (Bellaiche, 2020; Bhatti et al., 2020; ONTSI, 2020).
The Industry 4.0 technological development model pursued by academic, private and
public initiatives that intends to transform businesses (MINCOTUR, 2020), where the use of
ICTs (information and communication technologies), such as cloud computing, artificial

1. General Business
Activity Closure

2. Survival
3. eCommerce Strategies and
Explosion Entrepreneurship
Initiatives
Figure 1.
Theoretical framework
diagram
Source(s): Own elaboration
intelligence, machine learning, big data analytics, blockchain, 5G rollout, the Internet of COVID-19 as
things sensors deployment, hyper-automation and robotics, cybersecurity, 3D printing or an EIDaD
even drone-based operations, and many other technologies (Ghisellini et al., 2016; Murray
et al., 2017), is viewed as essential (MINCOTUR, 2019; Zhou et al., 2016) for generating new
accelerator
opportunities between customers and organizations.
What is new: COVID-19 has changed the rules of the market and consumers’ behavior,
forcing organizations to innovate and embrace entrepreneurship in order to survive. On the
one hand, the SME’s digitalization context, together with the impact of COVID-19 on society 3361
and business activities, has generated a series of events and consequences such as the closing
of commercial activity and the explosion of e-commerce, converging on the acceleration of
entrepreneurship and innovation within the actual context (Figure 2), formulating the main
research hypothesis:
Hmain The COVID-19 lockdown and business activity closures have accelerated
entrepreneurship, innovation, digitization and digitalization.
A counter-hypothesis could also be formulated with the point of view of the pandemic
lockdown and business closures as a paralyzing situation, where organizations have stopped
all activities, including entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives:
Hcounter The COVID-19 lockdown and business activity closures have stopped
entrepreneurship, innovation, digitization and digitalization.
The research scope is to assess whether the Internet domain data set is supporting the Hmain,
as the organizations that had technology were forced to digitalize their business, and those
which did not have a digital presence, especially the traditional ones, have had to look for new
channels, limited to digital channels due to the major impact of the pandemic; or, on the
contrary, the Hcounter is reflecting the real organizations’ situation, where all actions were
paralyzed.
The research analyzes the existence of relationships regarding the acceleration of
entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives within the COVID-19 situation, where the
organizations had to put in place in order to adapt to the new digital channel: (1) as for the
some of the businesses, their core activities remained the same, what has changed is the
channel with the client; or (2) the product demand disappeared; while for others (3) everything
has changed including client, channels and the productive model.
The COVID-19 lockdown and business activities closure, due to the shutdown of physical
and traditional channels, seem to have generated an effect on the new digital channels that
should lead to an increase of online activity and online presence, but perhaps this just reflects
activity or traffic but not a higher level of digitalization, digitization, entrepreneurship or
innovation. This research provides a feasible way to assess these facts by measuring the
Internet domain registration figures during the pandemic that reflects not only the increase
of activity, but the increase of organizations’ presence in the digitization, digitalization,
entrepreneurship and/or innovation field.

2.1 COVID-19 impact on society, entrepreneurship and business activities

2.1.1 General business activity closure. The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly turned from a global
health crisis to a major economic and social crisis affecting society as a whole (Carlsson-
Szlezak et al., 2020; Wren-Lewis, 2020), where governments were forced to act quickly and
take drastic decisions such as paralyzing the whole economy for the sake of public health
(World Economic Forum, 2020a, b). This had obvious negative effects on job security, where
employees suddenly felt unprotected, as teleworking was not common practice or even an
option for most of jobs, and business organizations were suddenly unable to operate or
 BFJ

3362
123,10

Figure 2.

innovation
accelerated
The COVID-19

entrepreneurship and
activities closure have
lockdown and business
COVID-19 impact on society, entrepreneurship and business
activities

Pandemic General
impact business
factors activity
closure
The COVID-19 lockdown
and business activities
eCommerce
closure have accelerated
Explosion
entrepreneurship and
innovation.

digitalization status
Survival/

Organizations’ digitization and

Entrepreneurs
hip initiaves

Source(s): Own elaboration

generate any kind of income, leading them to potential financial issues as they might be COVID-19 as
unable to make payments or recover investments. an EIDaD
This led governments across the world to actively inject money into the economy by
means of active policies to palliate the pandemic effects: (1) some subsidies targeted
accelerator
manpower, where their national healthcare systems provided full coverage in event of
COVID-19 symptoms, while other subsidies targeted families at risk of poverty by providing
them with a basic income for a short period of time (Dıaz, 2020; Gorjon, 2019); and (2) from
businesses’ perspective, governments targeted tax relief and temporary employees’ subsidies 3363
for organizations that, due to their sector, such as hospitality, had to shut down completely or
drastically reduce their commercial activity, thereby avoiding massive layoffs (Lacomba
Perez, 2020).
Unfortunately, reports indicate a very negative panorama, as while still recovering from
the pandemic’s effects, a second wave has already begun (Ali, 2020; Stefana et al., 2020) and
will likely bring back selective lockdowns and social distancing measures, as well as business
activity restriction, especially on hospitality, that due to cold weather can only operate
indoors, thus increasing the risk of infections. Therefore, within this context, unless
organizations make use of their extra spare funds, if any, or government expands public help
to keep the businesses afloat, most of them are likely to go bankrupt, leading to
unemployment (Cowling et al., 2020).
This overall situation is altering consumers’ habits, making them more unpredictable than
ever (Pastore, 2020), as for some of them lockdown anxiety has led to impulsive offline and
online shopping (Lopez-Bueno et al., 2020), while for others, especially in underdeveloped
countries (UNCTAD, 2020), it has led to less frequent buying but bigger shopping carts,
delaying expensive purchases (WTO, 2020). It has put enormous pressure on local businesses
that, in addition to the outstanding debts and financial difficulties (Syriopoulos, 2020), have to
face additional e-commerce-based competitors, leading to the following hypothesis:
H1. The COVID-19 lockdown and business activities closures have forced organizations
to explore survival actions.
2.1.2 Survival strategies and entrepreneurship initiatives. Teleworking and beyond: On the one
hand, the COVID-19 pandemic has completely changed the working environment (Ahorsu
et al., 2020; Shader, 2020), with teleworking (Song and Gao, 2019), and employees’ changing
relationship with their company, proving that businesses’ survival is tightly related to the
use of technology. Remote work and online collaborative environments have been
demonstrated to be highly effective in maintaining normal operations, and this seems set
to continue as the daily business activity for many organizations (Belzunegui-Eraso and
Erro-Garces, 2020; Rimbau, 2020; Santana and Cobo, 2020). Nevertheless, organizations
should also keep in mind that technology also brings privacy regulations (INCIBE, 2017),
new threats and cybersecurity issues that need to be addressed (EY, 2020; INCIBE, 2018;
ONTSI, 2019).
Unsurprisingly, many individuals and families have shifted from major cities to rural
environments to avoid infection, but also in search of a more peaceful and mindful lifestyle
(Anghel et al., 2020; Ripani, 2020), pushing organizations to rethink what the future of human

resources or staff motivation and engagement (Rozman and Strukelj, 2020) will be. All this
within a pessimistic scenario where, due to the new safety and social distancing measures
(World Health Organization, 2020a, b), most of them may never return to the office, therefore
limiting the interactions between employees and customers, with a special impact on face-
related businesses activities (Harvard Business Review, 2020). Some authors indicate that
mindfulness could be considered as an extremely useful tool for improving the working
environment and self-awareness (Yela Aranega et al., 2020), especially in times where work
colleagues’ relationships are reduced due to the physical barriers. Due to remote working,
BFJ many people have moved from crowded cities to small rural areas, where not all facilities are
123,10 yet available, leaving a new potential market gap that needs to be fulfilled where customers
require new delivery models, products and services. Therefore, digitalization may initially
bring new uncertainties; however, these are normally overcome by the new business
possibilities to be developed (Deloitte, 2020b).
Digitalization as resilience: Reports suggest organizations should accelerate their
technological transformation processes and, in addition to the customer-centric approach,
3364 should also consider tighter providers’ integration, especially with existing IT partners, as
these are likely to already be able to provide enhanced technological solutions to the existing
problems faced by the majority of companies (KPMG, 2020a), and at the same time create new
products and services as required by the consumers’ new habits (KPMG, 2020b). However,
these tasks need to be addressed as soon as possible, as there will always be a latent risk of
subsequent lockdowns, especially taking into account the negative perspective on
eradicating the virus by means of vaccines (Gartner, 2020c; PriceWaterhouseCoopers,
2020). If executed correctly, this acceleration has potential for leading toward new sustainable
economic models, allowing the economy to recover, be more digital, more competitive and
resilient for the subsequent crises’ endurance (Deloitte, 2020a).
Supporting organizations: As almost 99% of the EU’s organizations are small and
medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and microenterprises, including startups and self-
employed, undeniably they can be considered as the main contributors of talent, workforce
and economic figures, meaning they have a huge impact on employment and economic
recovery, but due to their size, they also are the most vulnerable to uncertain situations (Rotar
et al., 2019).
However, they cannot overcome this reality alone; due to their fragile situation, they need
additional financial support in terms of tax relief or credits (OECD, 2020d), and the
institutional environment aspects, such as government institutions, education, markets or
business freedom; and the economic environment aspects, such as wealth, unemployment or
inflation, have already been pointed out by some authors as being some of the most common
drivers to entrepreneurial failure (del Olmo-Garcıa et al., 2020), which need to be overcome by
active public and private initiatives.
New business opportunities: Organizations, regardless of their size or sector, need to
embrace the pandemic as an opportunity to grow, that promotes entrepreneurship,
innovation, business model transformation, a collaborative working environment and tighter
integration with customers and providers. Economic crises, the political environment and
entrepreneurship rate have always been tightly related, indicating that a crisis generates new
gaps and opportunities that are further detected and solved by leadership and
entrepreneurial actions, leading to the acquisition of additional entrepreneurship skills at
the end of each crisis that consequently benefits society from the newly generated innovation
and knowledge (Crecente-Romero et al., 2019; Sarabia et al., 2020).
Crises act as a stimulus to the business environment, whereas entrepreneurship can be
seen a defensive mechanism that provides innovation, value creation, resilience, continuous
operations, sustainability, digitization and digital transformation (HBS, 2020; Reuters, 2020).
As the response to COVID-19-generated worldwide lockdowns, multiple manufacturers,
farmers, breeders or fishermen who were targeting niche markets, such as dealing with
premium or gourmet class products, have been heavily impacted by the pandemic, as their
customers or partners, such as restaurants or specific sales channels, had to close down.
Consequently, organizations inevitably had to reinvent their sales channels toward an
innovation, such as selling through non-traditional channels like Instant Messaging
applications or social networks. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented new ways
to solve problems, such as massive online education, which previously was unthinkable at
country scale (WEF, 2020a), or low-cost ventilators and 3D printed face coverings (WEF,
2020b). New services, e-commerce or last mile delivery riders will play a major role in shaping COVID-19 as
what will be the future of business within social distancing measures. Therefore, the an EIDaD
following hypothesis has been formulated:
accelerator
H2. The COVID-19 pandemic situation gap has generated new entrepreneurship and
business opportunities.
2.1.3 E-commerce explosion. Pre-COVID perspective: The existing reports prior to the COVID-
19 pandemic (ONTSI, 2018, 2019, 2020) indicate that online presence, social network presence 3365
or e-commerce actions were not considered as a main business priority and point out a general
lack of deployment, as well as a major gap between SMEs, the large organizations block and
the microenterprises block: (1) regarding corporate web page availability, where an
organization provides a set of landing page, product or services catalogue, and contact
details, among other elements regarding the aspects of their business, the figures have
remained the same at 78.2% for SMEs and large organizations, while slightly decreasing
from 31.1 to 30.2% for microenterprise organizations; (2) from the point of view of social
media, whose main objective is to promote products or services on the social networks, the
SMEs and large organizations show a slight decrease from 51.8 to 52.9%, while
microenterprise organizations indicate a more noticeable fall from 35.3 to 32.8%; and (3)
finally, from the pure e-commerce perspective, SMEs and large organizations show a minor
improvement from 32.1% to almost 33.9%, while microenterprise organizations have slightly
decreased from 18.2 to 17.5%.
COVID-19. situation: Lockdowns and social distancing measures have changed
consumers’ habits, leading to a significant volume of e-commerce, social media activity
and online entertainment demand. Online transactions have increased not only due to the fact
of lockdown, where people had to remain in their homes, and businesses were closed to
minimize the risk of infection, but also due to the novelty of these measures, as these had not
been seen before in peacetime, where some reports indicated increases in China between 15
and 20%, while in Italy it was estimated at around 81% during the February 2020 period
(McKinsey Digital, 2020).
Computers and consumer electronics, fitness, healthcare, do-it-yourself products, as well
as cosmetics and body care, together with food and beverages, were the categories with
major increases; another detected pattern was that consumers in emerging economies
focused on essential products and postponed larger expenditures (UNCTAD, 2020; WTO,
2020). Therefore, companies and individuals started a worldwide stockpiling, causing
supply chain disruption due to bottlenecks (Luca et al., 2020), fueled by (1) manpower
shortage, leading to a reduced production rate that could not meet the market demand, as the
lockdown forced a stoppage in almost all sectors (Goodell, 2020; McKibbin and Fernando,
2020), including transport and logistics providers, for several weeks; (2) exponential market
demand for products limited to specific sectors, such as facemasks commonly used in
healthcare (Wang et al., 2020; World Health Organization, 2020c); and (3) closure of
businesses shifted customers formerly served by offline channels to the online channels
(UNCTAD, 2020), putting enormous pressure on logistics, which were already suffering
from manpower shortages.
Unfortunately, this unexpected situation led to some unethical e-commerce practices
(WTO, 2020), such as increased prices due to high demand (Cabral and Xu, 2020), fraud and
cybersecurity attacks (NCSC, 2020), as well as safety and quality concerns due to counterfeit
products (OECD, 2020b). An example of a response was the Spanish government fixing
facemask prices to avoid speculation (ElPais, 2020), or major e-commerce platforms selling
medical and facemasks products only to accredited medical centers (Vox-Recode, 2020).
Following most recent technological reports (McKinsey Digital, 2020; UNCTAD, 2020), the
COVID-19 lockdown measures and social distancing have pushed organizations toward the
BFJ digital transformation of their business models that have led to an increase of digital
123,10 presence, such as websites or social networks, and e-commerce activity (Bellaiche, 2020;
Bhatti et al., 2020; ONTSI, 2020). Each sector had to innovate and remain digitally in touch
with their customers, by means, social network interactions, corporate websites providing
bidirectional communication channels including interactive bots, contact section or self-
serving cancellation services, especially for airlines and travel-related sectors, and digital
menu and restricted table booking services for bars and restaurants, among many new
3366 innovative features.
These new business requirements need to be supported by online presence (Bhatti et al.,
2020; Solis, 2020; Ungerer et al., 2020), indicating a major implementation gap between SMEs
and microenterprises with regard to digitization, digitalization and e-commerce (UNCTAD,
2020), as most consumers were not able to contact or find an online channel from which to buy
from their local businesses. Some sectors, such as restaurants or delicatessen producers, have
been affected by the pandemic as their natural customers have disappeared, forcing them to
create new digital channels, such as selling through non-traditional channels like Instant
Messaging applications or social networks. Therefore, businesses had to rapidly accelerate
their digital transformation either by integrating into existing known marketplaces (Crockett
and Grier, 2020; Kim, 2020) for general goods sales, and even food delivery services (Bhakta,
2020; Li et al., 2020), who reported record-breaking delivery and financial figures (CNBC,
2020); or by creating their self-hosted solutions (Bhatti et al., 2020), consequently leading us to
the following hypothesis:
H3. The COVID-19 lockdown and business activities closures have forced organizations
to shift from traditional channels to digital channels.

2.2 Organizations’ digitization and digitalization status

Digitization concept: Digitization can be seen as the procurement process that businesses
follow in order to purchase new technological assets or simply to upgrade their existing
capacities (Gartner, 2020b). These assets could be hardware, such as computers, servers,
networking devices and sensors, or software such as operating systems, applications or even
digital content or services (PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 2016). Regarding this last item, it is
worth mentioning that in recent years, due to the extensive use of cloud computing
technologies (Benatia et al., 2016), the industries have shifted their business models toward
infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) for hardware virtualization, platform-as-a-service (PaaS) for
hardware and software products and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for pure software services,
where the organization or end-users pay for a periodic subscription (pay as you go) rather
than perpetual license (Safari et al., 2015). This provides great financial benefits for
companies, as the subscriptions can be considered as part of the daily business operations
costs – usually at a small rate – rather than accounting for them as major investments that on
the one hand require cash flow, and on the other hand provide more associated risks, such as
incompatibilities of the hardware or software with the business model and even
underutilization scenarios.
Therefore, IaaS, PaaS or SaaS digitization provides organizations with great flexibility
(Anselmi et al., 2017; Bhowmik, 2020; Watts and Raza, 2019) regardless of their failure or
success scenarios: if the virtual hardware or software is not fit for purpose, the subscription
can be cancelled at any time without any penalties; however, if it is considered successful, the
organization can easily upgrade to more functionalities by adding extra modules, or scale up
to the required number of users or performance capacities within a matter of minutes, all with
the most updated software version features (Seethamraju, 2015). This contrasts with
traditional procurement, where in order to scale up users and performance capacities,
companies are forced to buy new hardware or software licenses to upgrade, in addition to the
extra costs derived from maintenance personnel and deployment downtimes (FAEDPYME, COVID-19 as
2018; ONTSI, 2020). an EIDaD
Industry 4.0 concept: However, cloud computing technologies are just a small set of
features of the so-called digital enablers, part of the Industry 4.0 technological development
accelerator
model pursued by academic, private and public initiatives that not only intend to transform
business (MINCOTUR, 2020), but the whole of society itself, by generating new opportunities
between customers, companies and their providers; creating a customer-centric ecosystem
where all actors benefit from more options, personalization in shape, format, delivery and 3367
even different uses such as the circular economy or product as a service (Autio et al., 2018;
Fitzgerald et al., 2014).
The use of ICTs is essential to achieve these objectives (MINCOTUR, 2019; Zhou et al.,
2016); therefore, in order to facilitate organizations’ potential use case scenarios and
implementation into their business activity, the Industry 4.0 model groups the currently
available technologies and technological trends (INCIBE, 2018; ONTSI, 2019) into several
preset categories (Ghisellini et al., 2016; Murray et al., 2017), such as cloud computing,
artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data analytics, blockchain, 5G rollout, Internet of
things sensors deployment, hyper-automation and robotics, cybersecurity, 3D printing and
even drone-based operations.
Digital transformation concept: Industry 4.0’s ultimate scope is to lead organizations to
their digital transformation or digitalization (MINCOTUR, 2020), understood as the internal
process by which companies transform their existing business model into a digitally based
business model, integrating customers and providers on top of a solid technological
foundation, previously achieved by means of digitization procurement (Gartner, 2020a). Note
that the digitization process does not directly imply the digitalization of the business model,
whereas the business model for digitalization is not possible without a minimum set of
digitization elements within the organization (PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 2016).
What the reports say: The use of the basic digital enablers within the domestic
environment is considered as average for SMEs and large organizations, and insufficient for
microenterprises (ONTSI, 2018, 2019, 2020), while compared to the previous year, some
improvements are noticed, but they are not very substantial or widespread across all
segments: (1) The use of cloud computing, by means of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, has increased
from 23 to 28% within SMEs and large organizations, and from 9.3 to 10% for
microenterprise organizations. However, this digital enabler could be considered as the
most frequently used technology, as all organizations use at least some online email solutions,
an online office suite, online cloud storage, online accounting or customer management
platforms; (2) on the other hand, the use of big data analytics services within SMEs and large
organizations jumps from 11.2% and reaches 20%, while in microenterprise organizations
from 2.3% to almost 6%; this constitutes a common practice regarding the treatment and
processing of customers’ data, (however, there seems to be very little interest into expanding
that process to the organization’s internal data); (3) in cybersecurity protection, SMEs and
large organizations have improved from 87.3% to almost 93%, and microenterprise
organizations from 49.8 to 57%, by putting in place minimum protection mechanisms, such
as strong passwords, updated software, periodic backups or firewall installation, which aim
at mitigating the impact of a cybersecurity incident; and (4) the use of internal ERP (enterprise
resource planning) or CRM (customer relationship management) tools reaches a global
implementation of 45% for SMEs and large organizations, and barely 8% for microenterprise
organizations; however, as this is a newly created ratio, its evolution cannot be compared with
previous years, but the figures clearly indicate there is a large space for improvement,
especially for microenterprises.
Therefore, taking into account the point of view of digitalization, digitization and its state
of deployment within organizations, the following hypothesis was proposed:
BFJ H4. The COVID-19 situation has forced organizations to digitize in order adapt to the
123,10 new market reality.

3. Research methodology
3.1 Research model
There are several methodologies applicable, such as pure statistical analysis, but since the data
3368 set comprises a time series, a more specific data treatment is required that could deepen the
analysis within a specific time range. Therefore, from the existing literature regarding time series
analysis (Asteriou et al., 2016; H

akon, 2019; Luis and Rafael, 2020; Luyao et al., 2020; Pevehouse
and Brozek, 2008; Rahul et al., 2019), the authors have considered an ARIMA/SARIMA
(autoregressive integrated moving average / seasonal variation) (Box et al., 1994; Box and
Jenkins, 1968) as the most optimum methodology (Figure 3), forecasting a non-COVID-19 data set
from the available data and comparing it to the existing COVID-19 data set to determine if there is
any significant difference between them, in order to validate the formulated hypotheses.
The process has been put in place firstly by forecasting the non-COVID-19 data set: (1)
from the available data set, a limited sample between January 2013 and December 2019 has
been selected as the pre-COVID-19 reference data, as this period can be considered unbiased
by the COVID-19 pandemic as its effects on the economy were still unknown; (2) this sample
was then used to determine the SARIMA model parameters that would resemble the
evolution and pattern trends within the pre-COVID-19 context; and (3) using the SARIMA
model and specialized software, a forecast data set between January 2020 and September
2020 was obtained in order to determine what a non-COVID-19 situation would look like.
The second step was to extract the COVID-19 samples between January 2020 and
September 2020, reflecting the real situation of Internet domain registration; and the final step
was to compare the forecasted non-COVID-19 data set with the COVID-19 sample data set as a
whole by means of a paired samples t-test, in order to determine whether there is any
significant difference between the total figures comprehended in the same period. The t-test
has been selected by the authors due to its simplicity, compared to other more complex
methods for comparing between time series that are beyond the scope of this research.
3.2 Sample selection
As organizations, regardless of whether they were preexisting or recent ones, were forced to
shift their face-to-face communication channels to digital and online versions, the authors
have considered it essential to analyze the Internet domain registration data sets, as these
figures could reflect whether they have taken any digitization or digitalization action, such as
creating their websites for portfolio, e-commerce or similar digital channels in order to
maintain business continuity (ONTSI, 2018, 2019, 2020).
The Spanish environment was considered as an ideal international reference scenario, as
on the one hand COVID-19 lead government to declare one specific period of lockdown (World
Economic Forum, 2020a, b), and on the other hand, the lockdown was enforced in a noticeably
short period of time, therefore not allowing businesses to prepare much in advance (ONTSI,
2020). Therefore, the “.es” domain would reflect an ideal reference environment situation, as
normally domains are registered for their local geographic target region, while other
international Internet domains, such as the “.com” domain, were discarded as they could
provide misleading information due their worldwide generalized use.
3.3 Data collection and sample characteristics
The data set was obtained from the online published reports by the Spanish Red.es public
entity, part of the Ministry of Energy, Tourism and the Digital Agenda, in charge of
managing the Internet Domain Names Registry for country code “.es” (MAETD, 2020). These
reports have been provided on a monthly basis since 2007, containing raw data regarding the
 Pre-COVID limited dataset Forecasting Model Forecasted Non-COVID
extraction Determination dataset extraction

Datasets
Internet Domains comparison
Dataset

COVID situation dataset

sample extraction

Source(s): Own elaboration

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COVID-19 as

Methodology
Figure 3.
BFJ accumulated number of active domains, monthly added domains, monthly cancelled domains
123,10 and geographical regions where the domains were registered, among other statistical
information.
Although the existing data are provided since 2007, the sample used within this research
covers monthly information from January 2013 to September 2020, mainly due to the
economic factors in the years after the Spanish economic recession (2008) toward the recent
economic growth period until the current COVID-19 crisis; and technological factors as
3370 smartphone popularity and Internet access that have accelerated the creation of websites and
social networks use, making a total of a 93-month period, considered as a baseline for
the study.
The authors have focused on the monthly added domains figure, as it can be interpreted as
the creation rate of the domains based on the market’s demand, where the total number of
domains discarded it could be affected by a number of unrelated events, such as domains
renewal that did not reflect the real situation, but just the balance. In addition, during the
pandemic lockdown, the Spanish government issued a decree extending the expiry date of all
“.es” registered domains, resulting into a positive balance of domains; however, just after the
lockdown finished, a major number of cancellations were registered from the previous
months, making it even more difficult to use these data set features.

4. Analysis and results

4.1 Initial analysis
As the domain registry data set is crossing multiple years, chances are there could be some
trends, such as rising or decreasing activity; or seasonal patterns, such as summer absences
and low business activity, that need to be addressed in order to determine the most adequate
forecasting model (Box et al., 1994; Box and Jenkins, 1968; Smith, 2010). To assess it properly,
the data are plotted using the SPSS’s Sequence Chart function, and according to the initial
observations (Figure 4), it appears to show a decreasing linear trend, together with a seasonal
pattern between some specific months.
The first step is to address the linear trend by differencing the data one lag (d 5 1). If the
trend is linear, then the outcome would flatten, leaving only the random data occurrences,
also known as white noise (WN); failing to do so indicates the existence of quadratic or more
complex trends that require subsequent differencing (d 5 2, 3, etc.) to eliminate such trends. A
second Sequence Chart is generated following d 5 1 differencing setting (Figure 5), indicating
that the trend was linear type and effectively cancelled; however, taking into account the data
set samples covering the last 8 years, there is a high change of seasonality patterns, where a
quick analysis of the differenced chart indicates repeating high peak values between October
and February.
To address this matter, a seasonality differencing (12 months) for one lag is done (D 5 1),
generating a third Sequence Chart (Figure 6), where both linear trends and seasonality effects
are cancelled out, leaving only random WN residuals.
Therefore, the ARIMA (autoregressive, integration and moving average) model (p, d, q) is
discarded in favor of the SARIMA (seasonal autoregressive, integration and moving average)
model (p, d, q) 3 (P, D, Q)m within a 12-month period, where m stands for the seasonality
period (Box et al., 1994; Box and Jenkins, 1968; Smith, 2010).

4.2 Model determination

To determinate the SARIMA model components, the autocorrelation charts (ACF and PACF)
are generated using the previously identified differencing d 5 1, seasonal differencing D 5 1
and periodicity m 5 12 (Figure 7) without any transformation, indicating feasible p and q
values around 1 or 2 lags (Smith, 2010).
 45000.00 COVID-19 as
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NEW_DOMAINS

35000.00

3371
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JAN 2013
MAY 2013
SEP 2013
JAN 2014
MAY 2014
SEP 2014
JAN 2015
MAY 2015
SEP 2015
JAN 2016
MAY 2016
SEP 2016
JAN 2017
MAY 2017
SEP 2017
JAN 2018
MAY 2018
SEP 2018
JAN 2019
MAY 2019
SEP 2019
Date Figure 4.
Domains data plotting
Source(s): Own elaboration

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FEB 2013
JUN 2013
OCT 2013
FEB 2014
JUN 2014
OCT 2014
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OCT 2015
FEB 2016
JUN 2016
OCT 2016
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OCT 2017
FEB 2018
JUN 2018
OCT 2018
FEB 2019
JUN 2019
OCT 2019

Date
Figure 5.
Transforms: difference(1) Linear trends removal
(differencing d 5 1)
Source(s): Own elaboration

Based on these observations, SARIMA (1,1,1)(0,1,0)12 model is set as a starting point model for
further subsequent fine-tuning, generating a total of four possible options (Table 1), subject to
further selection and comparison, using the following criteria (NIST/SEMATECH, 2012;
Smith, 2010): (1) model validation, using Ljung–Box residuals statistic (Ljung and Box, 1978),
which determines the fitness of the model, where a p < 0.05 means it cannot be considered as
BFJ
123,10 5000.00

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3372 0.00

–2500.00

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FEB 2014
MAY 2014
AUG 2014
NOV 2014
FEB 2015
MAY 2015
AUG 2015
NOV 2015
FEB 2016
MAY 2016
AUG 2016
NOV 2016
FEB 2017
MAY 2017
AUG 2017
NOV 2017
FEB 2018
MAY 2018
AUG 2018
NOV 2018
FEB 2019
MAY 2019
AUG 2019
NOV 2019
Figure 6.
Seasonal trends
removal (seasonal Date
differencing D 5 1, Transforms: difference(1), seasonal difference(1, period 12)
12 months)
Source(s): Own elaboration

WN, and therefore not valid to forecast data; on the other hand, p > 0.05 indicates that the
model is valid. Regarding the proposed models, all of them pass the Ljung–Box test and
therefore can be considered as valid models; (2) model simplicity, determined by the BIC
(Bayesian information criterion) score which penalizes the model’s complexity (Bozdogan,
1987; Smith, 2010); however, all proposed SARIMA models are simple variations of the same
model, and therefore receive a similar score limiting the relevance of this indicator within this
context; and (3) the model’s forecasting accuracy comparison, measuring the relative errors of
the fitted data over the existing data set samples, as RMSE (root mean square error) and
MAPE (mean absolute percentage error), where a smaller value indicates a better model
accuracy (Hoover, 2006; McKenzie, 2011; Smith, 2010).
Following the initial trend and seasonality analysis, together with the components’
estimation process and comparison criteria, SARIMA (1,1,1)(1,1,1)12 model (Figure 8) has been
selected as the most suitable model. In addition, the authors wish to state that due to the
nature of the SARIMA (p, d, q) 3 (P, D, Q)m models (Box et al., 1994), the components can be
further fine-tuned to fit the data, leading to complex solutions requiring more data set
samples, whereas for the purpose of this research, a simpler model was preferred and
selected, in line with the existing available literature (Asteriou et al., 2016; H

akon, 2019; Luis
and Rafael, 2020; Luyao et al., 2020; Pevehouse and Brozek, 2008; Rahul et al., 2019) regarding
time series methodology application.

4.3 Data set forecasting

The reference data set to create the SARIMA model was specifically selected for up to
December 2019, as the COVID-19 discussion topic was not very common outside China, and
therefore it is safe to assume that the data were not influenced by news or other similar
communication media.
On the other hand, by creating a forecasting model based on historical samples, a non-
COVID-19 data set could be estimated, allowing a comparison between how the domain
 NEW_DOMAINS NEW_DOMAINS
Coefficient Coefficient
1.0 Upper Confidence Limit 1.0 Upper Confidence Limit
Lower Confidence Limit Lower Confidence Limit

0.5 0.5

0.0 0.0

ACF
Partial ACF
–0.5 –0.5

–1.0 –1.0

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Lag Number Lag Number

Source(s): Own elaboration

accelerator

3373
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COVID-19 as

Figure 7.

and m 5 12
d 5 1, D 5 1
(ACF and PACF) for
Autocorrelation charts
BFJ SARIMA models comparison
123,10 Model (1,1,1)(0,1,0)12 (1,1,1)(1,1,0)12 (1,1,1)(0,1,1)12 (1,1,1)(1,1,1)12

N. predictors 0 0 0 0
Model fit statistics Stationary R2 0.218 0.312 0.411 0.414
R2 0.548 0.602 0.659 0.661
RMSE 2437.317 2303.178 2131.496 2141.164
3374 MAPE 6.428 5.867 5.304 5.281
MAE 1993.577 1817.138 1649.755 1642.806
MaxAPE 20.306 17.757 18.032 17.876
MaxAE 5840.45 5787.486 5876.964 5826.154
Normalized BIC 15.777 15.724 15.569 15.638
Ljung–Box Q(18) Statistics 24.375 11.086 10.489 10.151
DF 16 15 15 14
Table 1. Sig 0.082 0.746 0.788 0.751
SARIMA models Number of outliers 0 0 0 0
comparison Source(s): Own elaboration

figures would have evolved under normal conditions versus the actual COVID-19 pandemic
conditions. Consequently, the period from January 2020 to September 2020 was generated
(Table 2) and plotted (Figure 9), using the selected SARIMA (1,1,1)(1,1,1)12 model and SPSS
forecasting function.

4.4 Data set comparison

The following step is to determine whether the COVID-19 pandemic had no effect on the
domains, in which case there would be no difference between the actual COVID-19 and non-
COVID-19 forecasted samples. The SPSS provides multiple forecasting functions, such as
comparing the model’s performance by means of training and test samples; however, this is
not the intended case scenario, where only a comparison between COVID-19 and non-COVID-
19 series outcomes is required and could easily be achieved using a traditional statistical
analysis approach. To determine whether there is any significant difference between the two
data sets, a paired t-test sample was considered the most suitable method for this scenario.
According to Yockey’s (2016) guidance for paired t-test samples, the null hypothesis
considers the mean between samples to be equal, and the alternative hypothesis considers the
mean between samples to be different, and therefore some variation exists between samples.
Upon processing the data using SPSS software, the following decision criteria were
considered: if p < 0.05, then the null hypothesis would be rejected and the alternative
hypothesis chosen; if p > 0.05, then the null hypothesis would be chosen and the alternative
discarded, as the sample means values are not statistically different.
As per the t-test analysis, the data sets can be considered as statistically significant;
therefore, during COVID-19, there has been a significant difference, where the actual COVID-
19 situation data set (M 5 33570.22 , SD 5 5330.91) shows a statistically higher impact than
the non-COVID-19 forecasted data set (M 5 29999.26 , SD 5 3400.94), t(8) 5 2.351, p < 0.05
(0.047) and d 5 0.78 (medium to large effect), with no statistically significant linear correlation
between them r(9) 5 0.527, p > 0.05 (0.154).
For the first months of 2020, up until March, the COVID-19 real data set evolution is
remarkably similar to the non-COVID-19 forecasted data set (Figure 10), confirming that on
the one hand the SARIMA model and forecasted data are within valid parameters, and on the
other hand the first months are not influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic news and media.
However, due to the assumption that the pandemic would end after the first lockdown, the
monthly registration ratio slightly decreases, reaching the seasonal expected value by
 COVID-19 as
an EIDaD
NEW_DOMAINS - Model_1 accelerator

1.0
3375

0.5
Residual PACF

0.0
–0.5
Residual
–1.0
1.0
0.5
Residual ACF

0.0

Source(s): Own elaboration

–0.5
–1.0
23
21
19
17
15
13
11
9
7
5
3
1

Figure 8.
Lag SARIMA (1,1,1)(1,1,1)12
model ACF and PACF
residuals
 BFJ

3376
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Table 2.

January 2020 to
September 2020
data set between
Forecasted non-COVID
Forecasted Non-COVID data set
(1,1,1)(1,1,1)12 Jan 2020 Feb 2020 Mar 2020 Apr 2020 May 2020 Jun 2020 Jul 2020 Aug 2020 Sep 2020

Forecasted 32895.43 32825.29 33928.26 31101.35 31324.17 28616.26 26987.45 23232.42 29010.77
UCL 36735.63 37055.74 38298.20 35556.47 35848.89 33205.21 31638.35 27944.06 33782.33
LCL 29055.23 28594.85 29558.33 26646.23 26799.44 24027.31 22336.54 18520.79 24239.20
SPSS note(s): For each model, forecasts start after the last non-missing in the range of the requested estimation period, and end at the last period for which non-missing
values of all the predictors are available, or at the end date of the requested forecast period, whichever is earlier
Source(s): Own elaboration
 COVID-19 as
an EIDaD

Observed

Forecast
accelerator

UCL
LCL
Fit
NEW_DOMAINS-Model_1

3377
Jul 2020
Apr 2020
Jan 2020
Oct 2019
Jul 2019
Apr 2019
Jan 2019
Oct 2018
Jul 2018
Apr 2018
Jan 2018
Oct 2017
Jul 2017
Apr 2017
Jan 2017
Date

Oct 2016
Jul 2016
Apr 2016
Jan 2016
Oct 2015
Jul 2015
Apr 2015
Jan 2015
Oct 2014
Jul 2014
Apr 2014
Jan 2014
Source(s): Own elaboration

Oct 2013
Jul 2013
Apr 2013
Jan 2013

Figure 9.
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Plotted forecasted
non-COVID data set
Number between January 2020
and September 2020
 BFJ

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3378
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Figure 10.
Comparison between

forecasted non-COVID
COVID-19 data set and
45.000

40.000

35.000

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20.000
3 3 13 4 4 14 5 5 15 6 6 16 7 7 17 8 8 18 9 9 19 0 0 20
N
-1 Y-1
PT- N
-1 Y -1
PT- N
-1 Y-1
P T- N
-1 Y-1
P T- N
-1 Y-1
P T- N
-1 Y-1
PT- N
-1 Y-1
PT- N
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PT-
JA A JA A J A A J A A J A A J A A J A A JA A
M SE M SE M SE M SE M SE M SE M SE M SE
PRE-COVID dataset COVID dataset NON-COVID forescasted dataset

Source(s): Own elaboration

August, similar to the non-COVID-19 forecasted data set, with slight seasonal recovery in COVID-19 as
September; but with unpredictable results that the pandemic will highly likely to cause an EIDaD
subsequent lockdowns and business activity closure, organizations’ resilience,
entrepreneurship and innovation will be put to test again.
accelerator

4.5 Results
According to the data set comparison outcomes during the lockdown months, there is a major
increase in Internet domain registrations (COVID-19 situation data set M 5 33570.22 as 3379
compared to non-COVID-19 forecasted data set M 5 29999.26), indicating that organizations
were pushed into seeking survival actions.
The increase of domains reveals that during lockdown, the development of new websites
and the growth of e-commerce have increased; therefore, the hypotheses H1 – The COVID-19
lockdown and business activities closures have forced organizations to explore survival actions –
and H2 – The COVID-19 pandemic situation gap has generated new entrepreneurship and
business opportunities – can be considered as valid, because the increase of online shopping and
the growth of new websites can be understood as mandatory survival and entrepreneurship
actions, generating new business opportunities, especially regarding areas affected by the
pandemic such as ecopreneurs, organic entrepreneurship, sustainable entrepreneurship,
gastronomic tourism, social entrepreneurship, rural entrepreneurship development, and other
fields such as organic food industry, farming industry or organic businesses.
The evolution of traditional channels, such as physical shops, markets, flea markets, street
vending, farms, seafood auctions, delicatessen or traditional restaurants; and digital
channels, such as web portals, digital marketplaces, social networks, mobile applications,
circular economy applications, innovative last mile logistics or real-time order tracking, lead
to the conclusion that the hypothesis H3 – The COVID-19 lockdown and business activities
closures have forced organizations to shift from traditional channels to digital channels – can be
considered as supported.
Therefore, the increased number of domains and the consequent growth of e-commerce,
together with development of new digital channels, shows that organizations have evolved
technologically (digitally) in order to meet consumers’ new demands and the new market
trends, supporting hypothesis H4: The COVID-19 situation has forced organizations to
digitize in order adapt to the new market reality.
The defense mechanism regarding the pandemic effects supports the hypothesis of the
COVID-19 pandemic fostering digitalization, digitization, entrepreneurship and innovation
initiatives, forcing businesses toward digitization and digital transformation, as the
lockdown and business activity shutdown not only failed to paralyze digital channels, but
accelerated their development, increasing online presence and creating new business
opportunities, leading to discarding of Hcounter: the COVID-19 lockdown and business activities
closures have stopped entrepreneurship, innovation, digitization and digitalization hypothesis;
while supporting Hmain: the COVID-19 lockdown and business activities closures have
accelerated entrepreneurship, innovation, digitization and digitalization hypothesis,
confirming COVID-19 as an unfortunate accelerator of these factors.

5. Conclusions
5.1 Discussions
The COVID-19 situation has forced business organizations of all types, especially food-
related ones, to take entrepreneurship and innovation actions in order to create new
innovative channels, products or both, adapting existing business models and assets to the
new market reality to generate new business opportunities. The existing literature provides
significant information regarding the Internet domain registration’s evolution and figures;
however, the literature concerning its relationship with entrepreneurship, innovation,
BFJ digitization and digitalization is scarce to be almost nonexistent, especially within pandemic
123,10 environments, which is a gap the results of this research are intended to fill.
This paper contributes to organizations’ entrepreneurship, innovation, digitization and
digitalization within the COVID-19 environment by providing a practical tool that could serve
as an early and quick indicator of innovation and entrepreneurship initiatives within
business activities that could help individuals, organizations and governments to not only
take better decisions (Ashraf, 2020) but also to act in a faster and more proactive manner in
3380 terms of strategic planning, investment and financing as well as economic policies and credit
options.
Theoretical implications: The entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives, by means of
digitization and digital transformation, improve the way business is done by changing the
internal and external workflows (Arnold et al., 2016) and the interactions with the clients by
centering all company’s services and efforts toward them (Chung et al., 2016), and finally
promotes a tighter integration with providers or manufacturers to provide new services and
personalization options to final customers (Delgado et al., 2010), such as e-receipt applications
to the offline retail market (Gavrila Gavrila and de Lucas Ancillo, 2021). Another major issue
for digitization and digital transformation is how tangible or easy to measure are the financial
costs in terms of investment or economical figures as the forecasted return of the investment
(Katz et al., 2014; Kotarba, 2017). Digitization use provides clear subscription and hardware or
software costs, whereas digital transformation is difficult to assess or measure in an accurate
manner, as it always relies on the business environment.
Despite the general belief that purchasing new hardware or software is the way to gain
competitive advantage, in reality it is entrepreneurship, innovation and the technologies’
application that provide the real potential to disrupt operations, bring solid incomes and
overtake competitors (Alam et al., 2019; Matzler et al., 2018; World Economic Forum, 2016).
The outcome of the digitalization figures and reports (ONTSI, 2018, 2019, 2020) reflects the
fact that organizations, regardless of their size or segment, present a general lack of ICT
implementations and that there is a major gap between SMEs, large organizations and
microenterprises that could be considered as a major threat to their business continuity and
long-term survival, where entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives are the key solution, as
witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Inevitably the pandemic has changed existing shopping patterns, where customers not
only lost their fear of making online transactions, but even explored new product categories
such as groceries options, which were very uncommon before the COVID-19 pandemic
(Bellaiche, 2020; Dannenberg et al., 2020), and supply chain logistics became more mature
than ever with reductions in costs and delivery times (Ketchen and Craighead, 2020; Wang
and Xu, 2020), in line with McKinsey (2020), indicating an acceleration of 10 years of
e-commerce figures in only 8 weeks. Due to the fierce competition and market evolution,
organizations were unable to allocate sufficient time to analyze the direction their business is
going, as they are continuously drifted by the environment’s inertia. Lockdowns and
temporary shutdowns have a direct negative impact on businesses and the economy;
however, they can be seen as an opportunity for (1) organizations to learn from the past and
reshape their future by rethinking their business models, pivoting them or even embracing
digital transformation toward customers’ new needs; (2) startups, due to their leaner and agile
business model, compared to traditional companies, have the opportunity to pivot their
business model according to the new market situation (HBR, 2020); and (3) individuals may
develop new digital entrepreneurship opportunities, as they have had time to rethink their
personal situation. They might have extra time available to start on a new idea or restart an
old one, and they may be suffering from work burnout syndrome and looking for some
changes, or seeking a complementary income; this would ideally result in a digital business
being initiated, as social distancing may turn out to be a long-term constraint.
 Therefore, entrepreneurship and digital transformation processes accelerate technology COVID-19 as
implementation by means of the digitally born business models, where product-as-a-service, an EIDaD
rental and circular economy formats tend to be extremely popular, where purchasing or
owning the product outright is no longer an option due to large upfront payments, thereby
accelerator
increasing a trend that was continuously rising in recent years. On the other hand,
organizations need to think carefully about their business model changes, as despite the
current pandemic opportunities, it is critical to seek and adopt long-term business strategies
rather than short-term actions that would return them to the initial situation sooner or later. 3381
Those who succeed in the course of the pandemic will act as a model of leadership for the
next generation of businesses, shaping the future of society as a whole; therefore, they can
accelerate the recovery from the pandemic effects due to their potential growth that could
generate employment and new business opportunities within a new digital context
(OECD, 2020c).
Practical implications: During the lockdown months, there was a major increase of Internet
domain registrations, indicating that organizations were forced to explore survival actions
and choose digitizing an online presence such as their own dedicated website or e-commerce,
shifting from traditional channels to digital channels, in order to adapt to the new market
reality. The results suggest that the measure of the increase of Internet domain registration as
an effect of the pandemic supports the hypotheses of the COVID-19 pandemic fostering
entrepreneurship, innovation, digitalization and digitization initiatives. Furthermore, it
seems that the lockdown and business activity shutdown not only failed to paralyze digital
channels, but accelerated their development, increasing online presence and creating new
business opportunities. This point makes it possible to discard the idea that the COVID-19
lockdown and business activities closure hampered entrepreneurship, innovation,
digitalization and digitization and, on the contrary, can validate COVID-19 as an
unfortunate accelerator of digitalization, digitization, entrepreneurship and innovation.
Therefore, the results support the use of Internet domain registration as an early innovation
and entrepreneurship initiatives indicator within business activities.
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic, by means of enforced social distancing and
confinement measures, turned to be a form of business continuity test in terms of digital
readiness and technological resilience (Fitriasari, 2020; OECD, 2020a), whose economic
impact has not yet ended and is still to be quantified (Nicola et al., 2020), leading to different
and multiple classifications regarding the business impact that reflect the situation faced by
organizations.
From the practical point of view of the product or service (P/S): (1) there is a demand for
P/S, but the original distribution channel is no longer available, and therefore organizations
have to look for new markets and new distribution channels and/or markets; (2) organizations
can meet the original demand for P/S, but there is no further demand for P/S due to new
consumption habits, so organizations have to innovate completely new P/S to use the existing
productive assets; or (3) there is no demand for the P/S, and the existing productive assets are
no longer valid, and a total entrepreneurship is needed.
On the other hand, it can be seen from the point of view of organizations that (1)
organizations that did not consider digitization and digital transformation as part of their
strategic plan have suffered the full impact of the COVID-19 situation and had to close or stop
business activity. Note that some organizations, due to their market segment, could not
completely avoid the COVID-19 impact, such as hospitality or traveling segments; (2)
organizations that invested in digitization and digital transformation, but not sufficiently, or
they were not mature enough to mitigate all of the COVID-19 impact, and which had to
temporarily close or stop business activity until the gaps were filled; and (3) digital-born
startups, digital-born entrepreneurs and organizations pivoting or following a digital
business model, which were able to avoid most of the COVID-19 impact, some of them even
BFJ benefiting, proving that, now more than ever, digital transformation is mandatory in order to
123,10 maintain business activity.
An additional outcome of this study is the establishment of a research mechanism based
on the analysis of certain indicators and their ability to objectively measure the development
or slowdown ratios for entrepreneurship, innovation, digitization or digitalization of
companies facing extraordinary events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, this type
of non-invasive approach could allow the collection of unbiased data on the evolution of these
3382 indicators and their effective impact on organizations’ entrepreneurship, innovation,
digitization or digitalization aspects, which could help them to take better decisions and
act in a faster and more proactive manner in terms of strategic planning, investment and
financing, as well as economic policies and credit options.

5.2 Research limitations

As in any investigation, limitations always exist, where despite the fact that results could be
easily extended to the rest of the international environment, there could yet exist specific
particularities for each country that were not completely covered by the analyzed data set,
because its data set was targeting only the Spanish “.es” domain registration names. In order
to understand and mitigate this effect, future authors are advised to apply a similar process to
the one followed in this research, to carefully identify and filter out the external factors or
local events that might influence the selected Internet domain name data sets, particularly if
the data set includes “.com” general domain names which could involve registrations for
virtually any country or business activity.
Another relevant limitation of the data set is the lack of information regarding the actual
use of the domains, such as registration for each type of business activity, adding complexity
to the identification and correlation regarding MSMEs or large organization segments’
impact on entrepreneurship, innovation, digitization and digitalization, resulting in limiting
the scope of this research to a general analysis. Despite this limitation, according to the
literature analyzed within this area of interest and the COVID-19 pandemic, the retail,
wholesale, hospitality and service segments are highly likely be considered as the ones with
the most opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives.
Finally, the Internet domain registration data set provides only a specific point of view of
entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives (mainly from businesses that chose to register
their own Internet domain), without being able to aggregate to this ratio: (1) the organizations
that focused on social network accounts only, as these could simply be linked to their
accounts rather than the businesses having to deal with the complexity of a self-hosted
solution; (2) using third-party service aggregators, such as marketplaces, instead of self-
owned e-commerce solutions; or (3) using cloud-based services and tools, instead of
purchasing or investing in a hardware and software solution. Therefore, the actual number of
organizations that pursued an entrepreneurial and innovation process could potentially be
much higher than the Internet domain figures provided; however, due to the scarcity of this
information, this estimation is difficult to assess without additional data sources to support it.

5.3 Lines of research to follow

Despite the scope being limited to the above-mentioned conclusions, the authors consider the
novelty of this research to be the relevant link between entrepreneurship, innovation,
digitization, digitalization and COVID-19 impact that could encourage several future
potential investigation lines:
(1) Explore additional indicators: Similar to the Internet domain data sets, together with
their possible implications regarding entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives
that could help in future pandemics situations, it acts as a set of early indicators.
 (2) International entrepreneurship, innovation, digitization and digitalization comparison: COVID-19 as
Extrapolate the scope of the research to additional countries and domains to an EIDaD
determine if the COVID-19 pandemic affected all environments in the same way,
especially if those environments already have some existing degree of digitalization,
accelerator
and to what extent that would be significant within entrepreneurship, innovation,
digitalization, digitization and consumer behavior patterns, along with a correlation
analysis regarding creation or destruction of businesses. In addition, the research
could be expanded, by means of additional data sets, toward the business activity 3383
sector identification and determination of which sectors were more affected by the
COVID-19 pandemic than others, which of them managed to overcome it and to what
extent they succeeded within this process.
(3) COVID-19 entrepreneurship, innovation, digitization and digitalization impact ratio:
Now that there is a clear entrepreneurial and innovation trend due to the COVID-19
pandemic, the next step would be to conduct qualitative research regarding the
impact of online presence, and whether organizations have noticed any
improvements to their business, on the other hand, if it was not as relevant as
might have been expected. As an extension to this line of research, a quantitative
perspective could be analyzed, such as calculating the return of investment ratio from
the economic figures, especially as the subsequent lockdown waves are highly likely
to occur. This could set the baseline of a benchmark data set that could be further
used as an international comparison instrument.
(4) Entrepreneurship, innovation, digitization and digitalization long-term resilience
effects: As the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to extend over a long
period of time, likely it will trigger further lockdowns, testing organizations and
entrepreneurship’s resilience capacity again and again, forcing them to adapt to the
conditions of the new environment, leading to another future qualitative research line
of high interest for organizations, such as analyzing whether entrepreneurship,
innovation, digitization or digitalization’s prior investments have helped them to be
more resilient and better prepared for business continuity. This could be used to
elaborate a major international “lessons learned” database that could help
governments, MSMEs, large organizations or future entrepreneurs to take better
and more coordinated decisions regarding entrepreneurship and innovation.

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About the authors

Associate Professor Sorin Gavrila Gavrila is an associate professor and joined the Economics, Business
and Tourism Faculty at Alcala University in 2019. He holds a BS in business informatics and an
international MBA degree and is currently working toward a PhD (Alcala University). Since September
2017, he has been working on multiple international research and development projects related to virtual
reality, data analytics, cybersecurity, air traffic management and unmanned/drones traffic management
within industrial applications at Indra Company. Sorin Gavrila Gavrila is the corresponding author and
can be contacted at: sorin.gavrila@uah.es
Professor Antonio de Lucas Ancillo joined the Economics, Business and Tourism Faculty at Alcala
University in 2003. He holds a BS and MA in telecommunication engineering, and a PhD in business
(Madrid Polytechnic University). His academic experience includes School of Tourism and Economics,
and Faculty of Economics and Business and Polytechnic. He has published seven books, and
coordinated 28 studies on the information society and ICTs. He was elected president of the IT sectorial
area of AMETIC for 2016–2018. He has more than 25 years of experience, working in consulting,
services, industry and public administration roles (Indra, Tecnocom, Everis and IBM, CEMEX and DoD),
participating in ICT business projects worldwide.

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