Agility in the Events Sector A Case Study of a Business Event in Finland

The events industry was estimated at $1,100 billion in 2018 and was expected to grow to reach $2,330 billion by 2026 (Allied Market Research, n.d.). Year 2020, however, turned out to be perhaps the most transformative year in the industry in the last decades. Numerous events, from smaller family occasions, like weddings, to major events of the likes of the Wimbledon tennis tournament, the UEFA EURO 2020, Glastonbury Festival and the Cannes Film festival, had to be cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The combined economic impact is not yet known but will be a loss in the hundreds of billions of US dollars (Gössling, Scott, & Hall, 2021). This shows the vulnerability of the events industry to major crises. Despite the negative impacts of crises on events, there is a paucity of research that explores organizational responses under unusual, unprecedented or critical circumstances in the events sector. This chapter applies the concept of agility in event organization within volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, so-called VUCA, environment (Bennett & Lemoine, 2014) that dominated year 2020 due to the unfolding pandemic. The agile approach is often seen as a stream of new ideas leading to elegantly simple solutions. It requires a high energy level of the team involved due to the tight constraints and deadlines. The authors introduce a case study of a business festival organized in Turku (Finland) and discuss the decision-making process, stakeholder involvement, introduction of a new modus operandi, and the new event format that was chosen.

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