Digital_Ranking_Report_2021

Digital competitiveness challenges in the midst of the pandemic

Arturo Bris Director IMD World Competitiveness Center José Caballero Senior Economist IMD World Competitiveness Center

Christos Cabolis Chief Economist IMD World Competitiveness Center Marco Pistis Research Specialist IMD World Competitiveness Center

1.

Introduction

2020 started with news of a pandemic out of Wuhan, China. After a slow response by the rest of the world, the aftermath of the pandemic was clear and powerful. The presence of COVID-19 introduced two great challenges to governments around the world: a health crisis and subsequent economic turmoil. To address the health crisis, countries had three areas to tackle. The first was to identify those people who were infected; a task that required frequent and accurate testing. The second was to control the spread of the virus; an undertaking that demanded new products and tools, from a large number of protective masks, gloves and bodywear, to digital applications that notified people if they had encountered an infected person. Finally, the existing health infrastructure system, used by countries to coordinate and

provide care to people with life-threatening symptoms, was an overpowering constraint too difficult to overcome during the pandemic for almost all countries. The twin challenge of the pandemic – the economic crisis – spawned a similar response from every country, at least in principle. On the one hand, to introduce expansionary fiscal and monetary policies to stimulate the aggregate demand of economies. On the other, to extend liquidity provisions to people and firms in an unprecedented manner, to safeguard social wellbeing and the capacity of firms to operate under the difficult conditions of lockdown and broken international supply chains.

The common link for the success of the above measures was technological infrastructure. More specifically, the

Figure 1 : Measures adopted under pandemic conditions

Under the current pandemic, your company has successfully (top 5 economies)

Repurposed current technologies

Adopted new technologies

Facilitated the staff’s redeployment of their existing skills

Enabled employees to train according to technological changes

None of the above

70%

60%

50%

40%

% of respondents (multiple answers)

30%

20%

10%

0%

United States

Hong Kong SAR

Sweden

Denmark

Singapore

18

IMD WORLD DI G I TAL COMPET I T I VENESS RANK ING 2021