Switzerland gains a position in digital competitiveness ranking

The yearly ranking – one of four produced in 2022 by the IMD’s World Competitiveness Center WCC – has seen Denmark take the lead for the first time since the ranking began six years ago. The Scandinavian country ousted the USA, who had to settle for second place – also for the first time since 2017. Elsewhere in the top ten, Sweden remains in 3rd place, and Singapore gains one position, taking 4th. Switzerland moves up to 5th (from 6th).

A total of 63 global economies were studied in terms of their ability to adopt and explore new digital technologies. This year 54 criteria were measured – a mixture of external hard data and the IMD Executive Opinion Survey – and arranged into three major groups: future readiness, knowledge and technology.

Denmark’s triumph is in large part due to its outstanding performance in future readiness: defined by the WCC as “the level of country preparedness to exploit digital transformation”. It performs strongly in business agility (1/63) and in IT integration (1/63), also reaching 5th in its adaptive attitudes.

Switzerland tops the knowledge ranking but shows a relatively poor performance in future readiness. In all three sub-factors, Switzerland scores significantly lower than last year. In adaptive attitudes Switzerland ranks 12th (2021: 10), in business agility 7th (4) and in IT integration sixth (4).

"Switzerland is on its way to becoming a fully developed digital nation, with satisfactory digital infrastructure and regulation, data governance and digital attitudes. A key success factor for the future though will be the introduction of a digital identity program in the country. The top nations in the ranking, such as Denmark and Singapore, are already marking the way in this sense," said Arturo Bris, Director of the WCC.

(Stefan Kyora)