Global Impact of Digital Transformation on Entrepreneurship: Present Position in Spain

Abstract

The application of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) is a daily element in our current reality. However, these technologies are producing impacts of great importance in society and companies. It is widely agreed that we are facing a process of digital transformation that moves the productive sectors and social groups towards what we might call a global technological order. But how this situation affects one of the levers of that same digital transformation, the entrepreneurial ecosystem? And how has all this been impacted by globalization? Spain, at present, seems to be in a privileged position in terms of the main dimensions of digital competitiveness, at least within the EU, and, mainly, concerning digital public services. However, entrepreneurship reality in our country does not quite take off despite the high rate of youth unemployment we suffer. We still do not have a high-standard entrepreneurial activity that mainly tends towards innovation and disruptive changes. We neither manage to arouse interest in the massive creation of high-tech startups that could create a complementary framework to medium and large companies. There were many steps towards a deep digital transformation in our country. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen if this circumstance transcends the mere quantitative indicators and manages to reach the situation of entrepreneurial ecosystem. This article aims to discover the relationships between digital transformation, the world of entrepreneurship and the creation of companies related to Spain, nowadays, in order to establish the possible effects that both perspectives would accumulate reciprocally and also to clear up if we are facing singularities that would identify the processes being produced, such as "startuprization", enabling companies to grow with the subsequent global economic development. Keywords: digital transformation, entrepreneurship, globalization, startups, entrepreneurial ecosystem