ICT Technologies in Europe: Technological Diffusion and Economic Growth

The ICT sector is one of the key instruments for the economic development of an economy. The literature emphasizes its capacity for causing increase of productivity and generating new sources of incomes (Jorgenson, 2001; Colecchia and Schreyer, 2002; among others). Usually the economic studies measure the ICT sector impacts in the economic system but not the factors that can influence in the ICT opportunities for the whole economic development. Following Burt's approach (1992) about structural holes, the economic network organization establishes to whom and where the existence of new opportunities is reported. The network structure provides advantages of access, time and exclusivity to some agents but not for all. The structural hole methodology allows us to analyze the capacity of European ICT sector in the market opportunities creation and in the diffusion and technological innovation. The results corroborated the last inform about digital competitiveness in Europe by European Commission. Not only the ICT technologies have an important capacity of growth but their dependencies of other sectors are slight.