Measuring performance and monitoring change within an industrial ecosystem are vital components that enable policymakers and industry stakeholders to track progress over time and obtain valuable feedback on whether the system is moving in the desired direction. This report is a contribution to the ‘Monitoring European Industrial Ecosystems’ project, initiated by the European Commission's Directorate General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship, and SMEs, in partnership with the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA). Its primary objective is to present the current state and the advancements achieved over time in terms of the green and digital transition of the digital industrial ecosystem. For each of the fourteen industrial ecosystem, a pathway for the green and digital transition, i.e., a transition pathway, is or will be developed. For the digital industrial ecosystem, this transition pathway is covered by the Digital Decade Compass and policy programme. The Digital Decade policy programme, with concrete targets and objectives for 2030, will guide Europe’s digital transformation in skills, infrastructure, business and government. This policy programme sets up an annual cooperation cycle, based on an annual cooperation mechanism involving the Commission and Member States, to achieve the common objectives and targets. In 2019, the digital industrial ecosystem employed 6.6 million people, and the value added was roughly EUR 674 billion. While, compared to the other industrial ecosystems, the digital industrial ecosystem is somewhere in the middle as regards employment and gross added value, in 2018, the ecosystem included 1.2 million firms, of which 99.8% were SMEs. When the COVID-19 crisis hit, it boosted the penetration of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and digital adoption. For instance, due to the need for telework, online schooling & shopping, the demand for digital infrastructure increased substantially. However, at the same time, like in many other sectors, demand decreased (e.g., demand for hardware for the automobile sector) and supply chains were disrupted, slowed down or even stopped in many countries. Other challenges facing the digital industrial ecosystem include under investment and the dependence on other industrial ecosystems as well as world regions for key value chain components to support the industrial ecosystem. In addition, insufficient levels of digital skills in other industrial ecosystems hamper the prospects of future growth in the digital industrial ecosystem, despite considerable potential. The uptake of digital technologies can enable a carbon-neutral EU, however clashes related to energy consumption, resource use and recyclability persist. In this project, the green and digital transition of industrial ecosystems have been analysed based on a tailored monitoring framework and dataset. The data include startup data, patent applications, trade and production data, investment data, online job advertisements and job profiles. The methodology of the data calculations is included in report on the conceptual and methodological framework.
