IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking 2020

Trends in the IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking, 2020

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

Introduction

The IMD World Competitiveness Center is publishing the fourth edition of the IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking (WDCR) that measures the capacity and readiness of 63 economies to adopt and explore digital technologies for economic and social transformation. WDCR relies on three factors: Knowledge, which captures the intangible infrastructure necessary for the learning and discovery dimensions of technology; Technology, which quantifies the landscape of developing digital technologies; and Future Readiness, that examines the level of preparedness of an economy to assume its digital transformation. In this edition of the WDCR, we introduce one new variable related to “Entrepreneurial fear of failure” as an additional criterion in the Business Agility sub-factor. The source of this variable is the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM).

In 2020, USA held the top position for the third consecutive year. Singapore held the 2 nd spot, while Denmark overtook Sweden to claim 3 rd place. Hong Kong climbed three ranks to 5 th , and Switzerland dropped one place to claim the 6 th spot. 2020 has been a challenging year for the world. Every aspect of our lives has been affected by COVID-19 and technology has been incorporated to address the pandemic in different dimensions from communication to monitoring, assessing and, hopefully in the non-distant future, finding a cure for the virus. For most countries the responses of our survey were acquired during the first wave of COVID-19. To be clear, the questions we ask do not refer specifically to issues related to the pandemic. Still, if technology is the most important tool in our battle against the pandemic, some of the trends we identify have an added significance.

Figure 1:Changes in Digital competitiveness ranking between 2019 and 2020

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IMD WORLD DIGITAL COMPETITIVENESS RANKING 2020