Mapping global digital evolution and digital momentum

Tufts and Mastercard launch the Digital Evolution Index 2017.

With digital and technology driving global connectivity, governments around the world must accelerate their digital growth to become and remain globally competitive and to offer better services to citizens. To map the current situation and understand trends, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and Mastercard have partnered to create the Digital Evolution Index 2017 (DEI).

The Index, first introduced in 2015, analyses over 170 indicators across four key drivers — supply conditions; demand conditions; institutional environment; and innovation and change — to facilitate our understanding of digital evolution and development in 60 countries.

“Every day, billions of people around the world use the internet to share ideas, trade with one another and keep in touch with family, friends and colleagues,” explain the authors in the 2017 edition of the Digital Planet Report, which launched DEI.

With worldwide internet penetration at nearly 50 percent1, the global digital economy has become a space of immense opportunity.

The report shows not only how digitalization is now one of the main drivers for globalization,” but also that “achieving a competitive advantage in the global digital arena has become a key priority for governments, businesses and citizens who strive for inclusion and relevance in this global marketplace.”

It is also clear that momentum, innovation, and trust all have a critical role to play when countries look to improve their digital development.

WHAT IS THE DIGITAL EVOLUTION INDEX?

The Digital Evolution Index 2017 includes analysis of each country’s DEI score and digital momentum — the rate at which countries have been developing their digital economies since 2008.

According to Tufts and Mastercard: “To investors and businesses, momentum is indicative of market attractiveness and potential; to policymakers, it is a proxy for competitiveness. It illustrates the pace of progress.”

“A high digital momentum score signals opportunity and, typically, improvements in access (more people coming online). It also reflects a society where people are finding increasing value and utility in the digital space.”

DEI maps four main digital evolution and momentum regions:

• Stand Out nations can be considered the digital elite; they are both highly digitally evolved and advancing quickly. Included in this area are smaller countries that have been driving innovation in the digital space, like Hong Kong, Singapore, and the UAE, and larger countries that have maintained a leadership position like UK, Estonia, Israel, and New Zealand.
• Stall Out nations have reached a high level of digital evolution, but risk falling behind due to a slower pace of progress and would benefit from a heightened focus on innovation. Included here are the United States and Canada, but also Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, in which, according to the Index, “past digitalization is not translating into future momentum.”
• Watch Out countries have low rankings for both measures. They have a lot of work to do, both in terms of infrastructure development and innovation. Watch out nations are for example Jordan, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, and India.
• Break Out countries score relatively low for overall digital evolution, but are evolving quickly enough to suggest they have the potential to become strong digital economies. According to the Index, this group includes countries that have the potential to become the Stand Out nations of the future, “with China, Malaysia, Bolivia, Kenya, and Russia leading the pack.”

The lead authors of the Index — Bhaskar Chakravorti, executive director of the Fletcher School’s Institute for Business in the Global Context (IBGC), Ajay Bhalla, senior fellow at Fletcher’s Council on Emerging Market Enterprises, and Ravi Shankar Chaturvedi, associate director for research and doctoral research fellow for innovation and change at IBGC — explain in a Harvard Business Review article how “two of the world’s most significant economies, the U.S. and Germany, are at the border of Stand Out and Stall Out, with a third, Japan, in the neighborhood.”

They say: “It is essential for them to recognize the risks of plateauing and look to the smaller, higher-momentum countries to explore how policy interventions could be effective in pushing a country into a zone of greater competitiveness.”

According to the authors, “the most exciting region in the world, digitally speaking, is Asia, with China and Malaysia as exemplars.”

The Index also shows how “countries with high-performing digital sectors, such as those in the EU, typically have had strong government/policy involvement in shaping the digital economies; [..] so do high-momentum countries (such as Singapore, New Zealand, and the UAE) as well as many Break Out countries (including China, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia).”