Over the past decade or so, successive Luxembourgish governments have sought to develop the country's information, communication and technology (ICT) sector. In this paper, we will examine how Luxembourg's relative position in the Networked Readiness Index (NRI), a key international benchmarking exercise published by the World Economic Forum, has evolved over time as these ambitions have been achieved. The paper also explores what policy initiatives could be implemented to further improve Luxembourg's ranking in the NRI. Design/methodology/approach: A longitudinal case study based approach, drawing on secondary data and the annual publication of the NRI between 2003 and 2016, was adopted. Findings: Luxembourg's position in the NRI has improved from 27th in 2003 so that it now ranks among the top ten countries in the world. In particular, Luxembourg has substantially improved its position with regards to "infrastructure" and "international connectivity". However, there are also areas, mainly linked to education, the provision of human resources and policies that allow for and stimulate entrepreneurship where further improvements appear possible. Social implications: The paper highlights the need for an overall, holistic, ICT development strategy. Such a strategy would cover not only cover infrastructural and technical aspects but also educational, social, regulatory and economic issues as well. Originality/value: The paper charts the evolution over time of Luxembourg's position in an important international ICT index and identifies its current strengths and weaknesses in terms of the different elements that constitute the NRI. This paper represents the first attempt to investigate the position of a small country, which are often overlooked in the literature, in terms of its changing position and the policies developed and enacted by a national government.
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.
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