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This chapter presents research to assess the impact of the recent financial crisis on technology-based small firms (TBSFs) in the United Kingdom based on findings from an extended telephone survey with the owner-managers of 49 young and 51 more mature TBSFs, undertaken in 2010. Even before the onset of the global financial crisis in 2007, it was generally acknowledged that TBSFs faced greater obstacles in accessing finance than conventional SMEs. This is because banks have difficulty assessing the viability of new technology-based business ventures due to information asymmetries, whilst risk capital providers may have difficulty providing appropriate or sufficient funds on terms acceptable to entrepreneurs. Given the recent difficulties that SMEs, in general, have faced in obtaining external finance, we would expect TBSFs to have been particularly adversely affected by the financial crisis. Our evidence showed that TBSFs exhibited a strong demand for external finance between 2007 and 2010, related to their growth ambitions and achievements. They sought finance mainly from banks but also with younger TBSFs seeking business angel finance and more mature TBSFs seeking venture capital finance. However, our evidence indicates that both debt and equity finance became harder to access for TBSFs, particularly for early-stage and more R&D-intensive firms. Where funding was offered, it was often on unacceptable terms with regards to the levels of collateral or equity required. The chapter provides evidence of a growing funding gap and concludes that the ability of TBSFs to contribute to economic recovery is hampered by ongoing problems in obtaining external finance.

The COVID-19 pandemic is having an unprecedented impact on schools and schoolchildren across the globe. There is still a dearth of studies that investigate this recent phenomenon in a developing country context, and this is true of Pakistan. Much of the population in Pakistan resides in rural settings and a lack of technology and of online provision of teaching for more than one year must have had huge negative impacts on students’ learning. The school dropout rate was already high in rural settings (Geven & Hasan, 2020) and, with school closures, this will likely have increased further, and cause some schoolchildren to lose interest in going back to school. However, no current data appear to exist to corroborate this. Due to the lack of available current quantitative and qualitative data, this study seeks to explore the impact of COVID-19 on schoolchildren’s education in Pakistan by examining recently published related studies. This study employs a literature review technique that gathers data to ascertain the potential overall impact on schoolchildren during the pandemic. The findings reveal that there remains a lack of detailed studies on this important topic and that urgent attention is needed from researchers to assess the scale of the impact. In addition, the review found that many children from rural communities had little to no school engagement due to technology poverty and their families being unable to support home-schooling, either due to family and/or work constraints or a lack of prior education and/or skills. Themes that emerged were that families, especially mothers, struggled to balance both caring and home-schooling duties, pupils from private schools had a better experience than those from public school backgrounds, and many of these reported that online provisions helped students develop new skills. This study may help to improve the understanding of the impact on the lost learning of schoolchildren during the pandemic by guiding practitioners as well as policymakers.

Purpose and need for study: Considering that the impact of digitalisation on the energy industry is currently one of the hot topics, our focus was to systematically overview the literature on this subject and subtract the most relevant papers. This study may represent a base for future research on the impact digitalisation has on the efficiency of energy industries and the sustainable development of economies counting on this industry.

Methodology: The authors employed a methodology of bibliometric analysis to help us reveal the main concepts reflecting the relationship between digitalisation and sustainable development in the energy industry and also to identify the most cited papers in the literature.

Findings: The most important concepts are digitalisation and also digitisation, sustainability and sustainable development, energy efficiency, the internet of things and Industry 4.0. For the more focussed research in business, technological development, urban development, smart cities and renewable energies proved to be very important concepts. The co-authorship networks revealed as most important 10–20 papers, considering that our analysis was based on a comprehensive list of papers in all domains (116 papers indexed in Scopus) and on a list of academic papers published in Social Sciences or Business, Economics and Accounting domains (59 papers indexed in Scopus).

Practical implications: This study evidenced the authors with the most valuable research on the topic of digitalisation and sustainable development in the energy sector, helping us continue our research in the future, with a quantitative study that will base its literature review on the most accountable and cited papers published so far in the literature. The national plans and public policies for sustainable development have a common ground when they refer to energy industries. The investments and digital development need to have a positive social impact improving health and well-being for citizens, supporting the quality of life, based on a fair transition to low-carbon economies.