Introduction to the special section on the digitalization of industrial sectors

Abstract

This article presents RBI's special section on the diffusion of digital technologies and their impacts on the manufacturing industry of five developing countries. Based on the results obtained in a wide research project conducted in the last five years by researchers in Industrial and Technology Economics from different institutions, with the support of the National Confederation of Industry (CNI), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB/INTAL) and the United Nations Agency for Industrial Development (UNIDO), the articles evaluate trajectories, identify the macro trends, the impacts on insertion in global production chains and the opportunities and challenges faced by manufacturing companies in developing countries to incorporate digital technologies into their productive, organizational and commercial practices. They show that the adoption of new digital technologies depends fundamentally on the existing technical skills in the company, as well as on the vision of the future of its leaders. In summary, the great heterogeneity between formal and informal companies, economic sectors, geographic regions and size of organizations reinforces the gap in the diffusion of new technologies and indicates a probable increase in economic concentration in favor of companies better able to exploit the opportunities of digital technologies.