Abstract
Information and communication technologies (ICT) are increasingly becoming an important component of economic development. Luxembourg’s ICT sector is usually characterized as performing admirably - it is often at the top-end of different indices and international league tables. Nevertheless, headline statistics and high-level assessments often disguise the complexities of dynamic relations. Ecosystems are one way of understanding complex interactions and relationships. It is in this respect that this paper deploys the concept of ecosystems to investigate Luxembourg’s ICT sector. The layered ecosystem model, devised by Martin Fransman, was utilized to map key actors that comprise Luxembourg’s ICT ecosystem, following which a program of unstructured interviews were conducted. This empirical material, combined with documentary analysis, provides the basis for an analysis of the interrelated elements that are shaping the development of Luxembourg’s ICT ecosystem.The study has identified the main forces that affect the ICT ecosystem and concluded that Luxembourg’s strengths are related to its well-developed ICT infrastructures such as international fiber and national ultra-high broadband connectivity and high quality datacenters and its political vision for ICT that has led to a supportive policy environment. Its main weaknesses are related to an inappropriate educational system in which technical and scientific training is less developed, missing e-skills such as coding, application development, technical IT know-how as well a non-entrepreneurial mind-set and a risk averse culture. The paper highlights the importance of the different socio-economic, political, strategic and technological forces that shape the ICT ecosystem of a small country in order to provide a comprehensive basis for its policy makers. An empirical focus on a small country helps to redress the research imbalance, whereby small countries are often overlooked by scholars. Nevertheless, we contend that such “smallness” engenders a unique opportunity for research engagement with a majority of primary actors in ecosystems, which might be unfeasible in larger countries.
Highlights
Luxembourg has one of the most developed telecommunications infrastructures within the European Union (European Commission, 2013a)
The authors aim to map the different actors in the Information and communication technologies (ICT) sector and analyse the relationships between the actors within the ecosystem in order to better understand how the ICT ecosystem in a small country like Luxembourg has developed over the last 15 years and more generally what are the internal and external factors that have helped to shape it over this period in time
This paper builds on the definition of the ICT sector and the underlying classification suggested by OECD (2011) for “measuring the information society”
Summary
Luxembourg has one of the most developed telecommunications infrastructures within the European Union (European Commission, 2013a). This paper deploys a layered ecosystem model approach as proposed by Fransman (2010) as a means to identify the main actors in Luxembourg’s ICT ecosystem By applying this model, the authors aim to map the different actors in the ICT sector and analyse the relationships between the actors within the ecosystem in order to better understand how the ICT ecosystem in a small country like Luxembourg has developed over the last 15 years and more generally what are the internal and external factors that have helped to shape it over this period in time.
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