Resilient by Design: Enabling Agility and Resilience in Ontario's Small and Medium Enterprises

At the time of writing this report, Canada has completed one year of lockdowns and restrictions due to COVID-19. The world is grappling with disruption at a scale that we haven’t experienced in recent years. The devastation COVID has wrecked through the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) community is just starting to show and it is expected to get worse.

In 2020, Canada lost almost 58,000 businesses and by Canadian Federation of Independent Business’ (CFIB’s) estimates, Canada could lose between 71,000 to 222,000 businesses which equate to 7% to 21%, respectively. With up to almost 3 million jobs at stake, it is not hard to imagine the devastation that this could unleash. SMEs make up almost the entirety of Canada’s economy, with 98.8% of businesses in Canada being organizations with 1-499 employees. Without question, where there is impact to Canadian SMEs, there is impact to Canada’s well-being.

This study looks to help SMEs thrive in disruption by helping develop their agility and resilience. The main research question of the study is: what are the elements of agility and resilience and how might they enable us to implement resilience in Ontario SMEs?

Original contributions of this study include seven elements of agility and resilience and, an accompanying Agility and Resilience Maturity Model that can enable SMEs to not only identify their current-state resilience but also to have a roadmap of transformation for resilience.