Business and Policy Perspectives on Digital
Business and Policy Perspectives on Digital
Digitization has expanded the gap between value creation at the firm level and measured economic activity at national levels. At the same time, digital economics creates opportunities and incentive for firms to scale up to the global level. Size, growing disparities, and potential for first-mover and enduring advantage have become matters of public debate.
Where do digital value and advantage come from – and how are they realized? How does this change as technology and business models evolve? How and where do evolving business issues intersect with policy frameworks. There is growing recognition that digital advantage is complex, contextual, and contingent – and subject to factors such as nonrivalry, reduced transaction costs, greater reliance on intangibles, the diversity of digital transactions and relationships, and blurred boundaries in product categories, markets, and jurisdictions.
Firms and policymakers are increasingly aware of the capabilities of digital technologies and infrastructure -- and their impact on economic, social, and political activity. Proliferation of data offers a new, largely invisible resource for linking, informing, automating, transacting, and interoperating businesses and users. Advances in communication technologies, algorithms, storage and processing capabilities, sensors and human capital enable the development and use of artificial intelligence. Digitization spurs debate on a variety of private and public policies including connectivity, privacy, security, disinformation, intellectual property, competition, innovation, and industrial policy – revealing divergence among sectoral and national interests in an unsettled global economy. Faced with the pervasive economic presence of digital, common definitions and metrics are needed to advance a shared understanding of value, risk, and the limits of knowledge.