New coalitions for Europe's digital future : building capacity, improving performance

In Europe's digital policy, digital managerialists, digital frontrunners, and digital convergers have emerged as coalitions among EU member states. This paper lays a focus on their stances on digital-policy reform and on their own understanding of the costs and benefits of the growth of the digital economy. The paper also suggests new ways for countries to cooperate in current or new constellations, which will allow them to profit from other countries' experiences, and to fully develop their own policy preferences as well as a clear understanding of appropriate digital reforms for them. Digitisation has the potential to support growth in many different sectors and the growing digital economy will make positive contributions to the productivity of non-ICT sectors as well. This is especially true for the services sector. However, countries with smaller digital endowments (e.g. digital infrastructure like networks) often believe that they do not stand to profit as much from digitisation as countries with bigger endowments. That is a profound misconception. Here, it is crucial to note that economic success in the digital economy is actually not merely the absolute level of digital endowments, but rather the way in which these endowments are effectively employed ...