Pivoting to face COVID-19 in the mobility industry: the BusForFun case

BusForFun is an Italian startup whose business model focuses on providing a platform to match event-goers and bus owners. The core competencies of the firm concern the optimization of bus routes, data analysis, and commercial partnerships. In March 2020, COVID-19 caused the operations of the firm to halt. The case focuses on the decisions made by the founders before 2020 and after the onset of the lockdown in Italy. The firm could have waited for the end of the pandemic by surviving through public funds but it chose not to, pivoting instead. The case presents the relevant information to allow readers to hypothesize potential pivots of the business model under different scenarios. Thus, by creating different paths of the business model, learners grasp the main tenets of relevant theories of entrepreneurial behavior in the face of uncertainty (e.g., bricolage and effectuation).