Mostafa Sayyadi
Executives today are under a tremendous amount of pressure in today’s post-pandemic knowledge-driven economy. They began to listen and respond to the plethora of information in the form of articles, books, and models attempting to provide effective leadership to help impact not only the productivity and profitability of the SME but also the competitive advantage. This article is set in place to inspire leaders to effectively lead their SMEs to meet and exceed the global challenges today. It is about getting the information needed to be successful in the right hands of executives worldwide in a post-COVID world.
The Pillars of Post-Pandemic Knowledge-Driven Economy
In a post-pandemic world, the business environment is constantly changing. Knowledge is a crucial part of hypercompetitive environments. SMEs can design, copy, or update products and services easier with more adaptability than ever today. SMEs compete globally but must think locally if they expect to exceed. And new markets place demands on the roles of change leaders in SMEs operating in this modern environment.
Today‘s knowledge-driven economy is placing more pressure on SMEs to employ effective leaders who are capable to develop knowledge-based SMEs and create competitive advantage.
Culture, structure, strategy, networks, and stakeholders are internal resources that can increasingly facilitate knowledge-driven performance and improve the search for knowledge.
Executives are now introduced to The Proposed Model
Based on an integrated framework of the above ideas and scholarly research, I depict an applicable and reliable model for executives as Figure 1. This framework of the model highlights a relationship between organizational resources and knowledge-driven performance and organizational competitiveness. In Figure 1, organizational resources have sizable impacts on knowledge-driven performance which also leads to better competitive advantage. In fact, better strategy, better culture, better structure, better networks, and better stakeholder orientation can lead to higher knowledge-driven performance and organizational competitiveness.
Figure 1: The New Proposed Framework

There are some executives that like to look at academic journals but unfortunately, the crossover literature has not reached them enough. I attempt to blend scholarly concepts with real-world application. In this article, executives see that I expand upon the subject matter of an SME’s internal resources. Insufficient consideration of the impacts of organizational resources on knowledge-driven performance and organizational competitiveness has been exposed. Thus, for executives, this article can portray a more detailed picture of the effects of these organizational factors on knowledge-driven performance and organizational competitiveness that have been mentioned but not placed in a model in the past.