Proceedings of the International scientific and practical conference ― Cambridge Science and Education Conference‖ (February 23-25, 2026) / Publisher website: www.naukainfo.com. – Cambridge, United Kingdom, 2026. - 289 p.

8 sustain differentiation and cost-position improvements while maintaining resilience and stakeholder-oriented value in turbulent environments. Keywords : competitiveness; digital transformation; global crises; resilience; organisational agility; dynamic capabilities; digital platforms; AI; supply chain resilience; Industry 5.0. Introduction. Competitiveness in global crises is increasingly defined by speed of adaptation, reliability of delivery, and the ability to preserve value creation despite shocks. Crisis contexts amplify three structural challenges: (1) rapid invalidation of assumptions (market, regulation, geopolitics), (2) cascading disruptions across multi- tier ecosystems (suppliers, logistics, partners), and (3) intensified trust requirements (cybersecurity, compliance, transparency). Digital technologies can directly shape these dimensions by enabling faster sensing of changes, more granular control of operations and networks, and scalable coordination across stakeholders. However, enterprises often treat digital transformation as a technology program rather than a competitiveness program, which leads to fragmented initiatives, weak linkage to advantage metrics, and limited sustainability of results. A competitiveness-oriented view requires reinterpreting digital transformation as a set of routines and governance choices that systematically convert information, automation, and platform effects into differentiation, cost advantages, and resilience outcomes under volatility. Literature review In work [1], a systematic literature review shows that digital transformation tends to strengthen firms‘ competitive advantages through innovation, efficiency, and cost reduction, while also reshaping value chains and upgrading opportunities; the key limitation is that the competitiveness mechanisms are often reported as outcome associations rather than specified as a replicable method for building advantage under crisis conditions (e.g., what cadence, triggers, and governance designs sustain advantage when volatility is persistent). In work [2], the authors review how SMEs can build sustainable competitive advantage through digital transformation and identify innovation and dynamic capabilities as central channels, highlighting big