Correlative approach to digitalization and economic growth

It is known that the evolution of digital technologies, together with a combination of other essential generic technologies, leads to a change in the way we design, produce and market related products and services, as well as in the way how value is generated from them. Digitalization and transformation of the business process to create remarkable customer experience are absolutely necessary for any company that wants to evolve and succeed in the fast-digitizing business environment. The main objective of this research was to discover how digitalization influences economic growth. The databases used were Eurostat and World Bank. We selected 8 main research variables, which were divided into two sets to describe (i) the phenomenon of digitalization by digital skills, mobile subscriptions, enterprises with e-commerce, and (ii) the phenomenon of economic growth by real GDP growth, unit labour cost growth, resource productivity and R&D expenditure of GDP. The research methodology was centred on Canonical Correlation Analysis to reveal the connections within and between the two phenomena. The results revealed, for example: the digitalization set was able to explain 70.33% of economic growth with the correlation of 0.800; the real GDP growth is affected by the share of enterprises involved with e-commerce, unit labour costs and resource productivity are affected by high-level digitalization seen by enterprises conducting data analysis on customers for marketing purposes; and that digital skills and R&D expenditures are positively related.