Which Nations are Likely to Succeed in the Post-Pandemic Digital Economy?

Which nations are likely to succeed in the new digital economy? The Harvard Business Review published an excellent article entitled Which Economies Showed the Most Digital Progress in 2020? that discusses how certain companies are adapting. What the study finds is that the U.S. is a Stand Out economy and China is a Break Out economy. What it also indicates is that China is adapting faster than the U.S. and we have not yet built our data infrastructure for innovative manufacturing and increased GDP advantages of the Information Age. This is also likely why we were hit hard by foreign espionage as our systems are better than most but our infrastructure isn't ready to capitalize on the new technology era leaving our younger generations at a competitive disadvantage.

You can see a few differences between Stand Out and Break Out

Stand Out

1. Expanding adoption of digital consumer tools (e-commerce, digital payments, entertainment, etc.)
2. Attracting, training, and retaining digital talent
3. Fostering digital entrepreneurial ventures
4. Providing fast, universal, terrestrial (e.g. fiber optics) and mobile broadband internet access
5. Specializing in the export of digital goods, services, or media
6. Coordinating innovation between universities, businesses, and digital authorities

Break Out

1. Improving mobile internet access, affordability, and quality to foster more widespread adoption
2. Strengthening institutional environments and developing digital regulations
3. Generating investment in digital enterprises, funding digital R&D, training digital talent, and leveraging digital applications to create jobs
4. Taking steps to reduce inequities in access to digital tools across gender, class, ethnicity, and geographic boundaries (though many access gaps still remain).

I have been working on a theory for like 8 years that discusses the digital economy and transactional clusters. It probably isn't worth that much to anyone but we do need to sort of think along the lines of new paradigms in economic development and growth. You can read more about the working paper HERE. 

Chakravorti, B, Bhalla, A. & Chaturvedi, R. (December 18th, 2020). Which Economies Showed the Most Digital Progress in 2020? Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2020/12/which-economies-showed-the-most-digital-progress-in-2020