The third-party funded project "Digital Growth: Understanding the Drivers of Firm and Industry Growth in the ICT Sector" is supported by the Ministry of Science and Culture (MWK) of Lower Saxony. The research project, which is conducted in cooperation with the research group "Business Informatics/Very Large Business Applications" of Prof. Dr. Jorge Marx Gómez, investigates the drivers and mechanisms of growth in the information and communication technology sector. The funding is part of the program "The Digital Society" of the Lower Saxony Pre-Award, which supports basic or application-oriented projects that explore the digital transformation from the perspective of the social sciences and in which social sciences and information sciences work closely together.

The "Digital Growth" project builds on the observation that while the information and communications technology (ICT) sector forms the backbone of the digital transformation and has experienced spectacular growth in recent decades, it is increasingly characterized by winner-takes-all markets and quasi-monopolies that raise barriers to entry and threaten the survival of small ICT companies. In addition, the question arises as to the extent to which technological growth drivers such as processor speed and memory density are coming up against physical limits. Against this background, the project will use qualitative case studies to investigate what drives company growth and how companies can manage to survive in winner-takes-all markets. In addition, the project will analyze patent and industry data to create a better understanding of how different technologies in the industry are interconnected and collectively shape industry dynamics. The new insights will be used to derive practical recommendations on how small firms can design competitive strategies in quasi-monopolistic markets and how regulators can support digital laggards and develop early warning systems to prevent monopolies from emerging.

For more information on the project, please visit the project page: www.digital-growth.org

More information on "The Digital Society" program can be found here: www.volkswagenstiftung.de/unsere-foerderung/unser-foerderangebot-im-ueberblick/nieders%C3%A4chsisches-vorab-die-digitale-gesellschaft

The press release from the University of Oldenburg can be accessed here: www.presse.uni-oldenburg.de/mit/2021/019.html