The European Commission defines digital economy as “the result of the transformational effects of new General-Purpose Technologies (GPT) in the fields of information and communication. It has impacted all the sectors of the economy and social activities, for instance: retail, transports, financial services, manufacturing, education,healthcare, media and so on. It has implications much beyond the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector. In addition, the Internet is empowering people in a new and different way to create and share their ideas, giving rise to new content, entrepreneurs and markets”. This definition arise the following questions: How did e-economy come in? How is it affecting people?

In agreement with the commerce department of the United States of North America the digital economy increase is due to four fundamental factors. First, there is a constant development of the Internet and its inherent technologies. Second there is an increase in ecommerce between companies. The process of creation, purchase, distribution and sale of products and services positively changed in an exponential way. Now a variety of products and services are distributed via Internet (music, tourist reservation…) in consequence the third factor is digital distribution of goods and services. Different sectors of different industries changed the way they operated their businesses obtaining significant benefits thanks to the development of digital products and services. This new economy has also helped the increase of conventional products stored and physically distributed leading us to the fourth factor, projection on selling tangible goods and services.

These factors have a huge impact in organizations and government’s decisions. The strong global competition and the emergence of new information and communication technologies is transforming society faster and faster. Summarizing, the Internet has built a new global digital society. Thanks to this new system of communication and information each of the steps involved in the basic processes of organizations (creation, production, communication, sales, service and control) can find big opportunities to solve complex projection operations of any kind, simplify or eliminate unnecessary steps, detect irregularities and invent new ways of coordinating processes, more agile and effective way in search of innovation. Furthermore ecommerce brings into play a lot of money, which leads organizations to want and need to be part of it. There has been a vertical desintagration making interaction and transformation costs fall down. Companies’ size is no longer limiting their benefits and intellectual property and customer relationships have become an essential motor for companies development and reimbursements. Intellectual property has turned into an independent source of income value (overactive benefits).

Last, but not least, access to information is no longer expensive and restricted, consequently consumers had become more exigent. In this new environment, companies are under the pressure of needing to incessantly create or innovative valuable offers to counter price competition, which is available to a single mouse click from customers. Digital economy has evolved in a network economy strongly reducing the time to market permitting companies to establish a bussiness with global presence in a short time. Society is now divided in two kind of citizens: entrepreneurs (looking for a gap in the market) and clients (acces to all products and services). Finally, it can be said that people are finding new facilities to satisfy their needs like
building their future creating a start up and/or profiting the services provided by the Internet.

Digital economy is global interaction, immediate information and abolition of trade barriers. Shopping from home, selling goods to clients in the other side of the world or speaking to your family from thousand of miles away is our day-to-day. Companies benefit from a global demand and customers from a global offer. Nonetheless, we would like to finish this post highlighting that people are different all around the world and they have different needs. In this context, “think global, act local” seems a good motto to surf within digital economy waves.