Rethinking Economic Risk in the Age of Digital Transformation and Sustainable Entrepreneurship

In a global economic context where digital transformations have had an extensive impact, economic risk management is undoubtedly one of the most important dimensions of the survival and sustainable development of enterprises. The purpose of this paper is to develop the interaction of digitalization, entrepreneurship and sustainability by proposing new categories of creating economic risk impacting on the digital transition: cyber risk, technological risk, digital market volatility and organizational adaptation risk. The overall research goal is to understand the extent to which firms (and particularly entrepreneurial firms) can potentially manage these risks, while taking into account the sustainability of economic development. The methods utilized encompass a quantitative survey-based analysis SMEs within Romania and Central Europe and qualitative case studies on nascent digital platforms. The findings show that the companies that wisely use capital to invest in resilient digital solutions (secure cloud infrastructure, AI applied to risk management) have shown themselves to be more adaptable to disruptive global economic shocks. The findings highlight the need to enhance risk culture as part of the strategic management in digital firms and make the case for public policies that would facilitate the responsiveness of SMEs to changes in technology. The paper contributes to the recent academic literature by providing a proposal for an integrated model to assess economic risk in the digital age, providing a direct and actionable model for drafting sustainable business strategies.