The OECD Digital for SMEs Global Initiative (D4SME) aims to promote knowledge sharing and learning on how to enable all SMEs to make the most of the digital shift, placing specific emphasis on the diverse opportunities and needs of the large ‘missing middle’ of SMEs and entrepreneurs, and on their role for an effective, inclusive and sustainable digital transition.

In this context, D4SME Conversations with Small Business Owners provides SMEs with a voice to share their personal stories and experience of digital transformation. D4SME network members, from different industries, OECD countries and levels of technology uptake can use this platform to exemplify different pathways to digitalisation, key factors of success as well as persisting challenges. They also have a space to share on the current role of governments and public policies in their journey and on how policy makers could effectively support them and/or create the right conditions for their digital transition.

The D4SME network wants to highlight cases in which business owners are weathering the turmoil and using digital tools to stay afloat in the context of the current economic crisis. But also to use these cases as a starting point to discuss how this “accelerated” digitalisation can impact SMEs’ business models in the longer term.