engleski

Entrepreneurship and Digital Transformation: Measuring readiness and needs of Croatian companies

Digital technologies are fuelling new forms of innovation and entrepreneurial initiatives that cross traditional industry boundaries and ecosystems, and integrate digital, as well as non- digital assets while accelerating businesses as whole, according to Nambisan et al. (2019). Digital technologies are changing the way companies capture, create, and deliver value. The impact of digital transformation, therefore, can be determinantal to the entrepreneurial endeavours (Garcia-Morales et al., 2021). In January of 2022, research among Croatian companies was conducted to measure digital readiness and the need for digitalisation. We have used an ad-hoc self- reported survey modelled after the JRC Digital Maturity Assessment and distributed directly to client companies. The results show, as shown in Fig.1, that most companies recognise opportunities created by digitalisation in their sector and consider their sectors strongly impacted by digitalisation. But at the same time, only half of them is satisfied with the level of digitalisation in their sector. The significant barriers to digitalisation are a lack of human resources with adequate digital skills, financial resources and support, including specific information on the available technologies or solutions. Despite the high self-reported digitalisation level, participating companies rarely use advanced digital technologies such as computer vision, AI, HPC or blockchain. Most companies have implemented omnipresent digital solutions such as cloud software, websites, e-commerce, ERP, CRM and digital communication tools. The practical implications of these findings are crucial, as they can assist policy makers and support institutions to identify the digitalisation needs and strengthen the advanced digital technologies uptake and entrepreneurship.

digital transformation ; digitalisation ; entrepreneurship ; digital maturity assessment

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