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DIGITAL ECONOMY STRUCTURAL EVOLUTION
A First-Quarter 2025 Analysis
Author: Davide Norini Dossi . Member of the CENTER for GLOBAL STUDIES & Applied Sciences
In recent years, and particularly during the first quarter of 2025, the disruption caused by the digital economy has triggered a structural reconfiguration of the entire economic fabric. The acceleration of investment in intangible assets has become a defining phenomenon: according to the OECD (April 2025), investments in R&D, software, and intangible technologies rose by +12.8% compared to Q1 2024, accounting for 39% of total private sector investment across advanced economies.
This marks the definitive overtaking of intangible over traditional physical assets (plants, machinery, real estate), fundamentally altering the aggregate production function: the economic model is shifting from a simple capital-labor (K-L) framework to a K-L-T model, where T stands for technological capital. As a result, total factor productivity (TFP) gains increasingly stem from endogenous innovations and network economies rather than from additional physical inputs.
Sectoral impacts vary: financial services (+5.2% productivity per hour worked) and advanced logistics (+3.7%) have registered substantial gains, while traditional manufacturing has seen only marginal improvements (+0.3%), except in high-automation niches such as electronics and precision engineering, confirming the deepening technological divergence across sectors.
Labor Market Dynamics and Skills Polarization.
At the same time, the labor market is undergoing a profound restructuring driven by digital technologies. Aggregated data confirm a sharp expansion in employment for high-cognitive, tech-intensive roles: during Q1 2025, jobs related to software development, data analysis, AI, and cybersecurity grew by +7.5% year-on-year within OECD economies.
Conversely, sectors reliant on routine tasks experienced a -1.8% contraction in employment, reflecting a structural shift in labor demand towards advanced skills. This phenomenon aligns with the Skill-Biased Technological Change (SBTC) model, according to which technological innovation favors workers with cognitive and technical competences complementary to automation, thus widening wage inequalities: average wages in high-skill sectors rose by +6.1%, while stagnation or minor declines were observed in low-skill domains.
Moreover, spatial disparities are widening: tech-dense urban centers (such as San Francisco, Berlin, and Singapore) are concentrating new opportunities, leaving behind peripheral regions that lack digital infrastructure and skilled human capital.
Fintech Evolution and Sharing Economy Consolidation.
The fintech sector entered an evolutionary consolidation phase in the first quarter of 2025. Despite a +15% growth in active users compared to Q1 2024, venture capital funding contracted by 12% over the same period, due to tighter monetary policies: the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank maintained nominal interest rates at 4.25% and 3.75%, respectively, reducing the appetite for high-risk investments.
Simultaneously, regulatory bodies such as the SEC and the EBA intensified efforts to define new frameworks for digital payments, automated lending, and stablecoin issuance, aiming to mitigate systemic risks associated with the growing technological concentration within financial infrastructures.
Similarly, the sharing economy is showing signs of market maturation: revenue growth for platforms like Airbnb and Uber stabilized between +3% and +4%, while emerging startups - lacking scalable competitive advantages - are increasingly exiting the market. The sector is transitioning from hypergrowth to an oligopolistic phase characterized by operational optimization, data value extraction, and vertical integration strategies.
Macroeconomic Scenario and Selective Disruption Trends.
The macro-financial environment in the first quarter of 2025 is marked by globally restrictive monetary conditions, with positive real interest rates and inflation under control (+2.3% average across OECD countries). This tightening has reduced the availability of low-cost liquidity, leading to a stricter selection process within the digital innovation landscape.
Investments are now more concentrated in mature technological assets, cloud infrastructures, cybersecurity, and industrial AI, while early-stage startups struggle to attract funding without strong evidence of profitability. Technically, a phase of "selective disruption" has emerged, where only companies capable of integrating advanced technologies, financial robustness, and adaptive resilience will survive. This trend is reshaping competitive dynamics, favoring sustainable growth models and steering the broader economic transformation towards a fully embedded digital framework.
The digital economy can no longer be regarded as an emerging sector; it has become a foundational pillar of the global economic system. Going forward, the collective ability to manage technological complexity - balancing innovation with social, financial, and geopolitical stability - will determine the success or failure of this profound transformation.
The first quarter of 2025 stands as a watershed moment for the digital economy. Innovation remains the essential driver of economic growth, but the challenge is no longer simply to accelerate technological adoption - it is to master its risks while maximizing its transformative potential. The future will belong to those who can turn disruption into structure, uncertainty into strategy, and volatility into sustainable prosperity.
April, 2025
Davide Norini Dossi
Member of VR Corporatenext's CENTER for GLOBAL STUDIES & Applied Sciences
Head of Operations . Corporate Affairs to VR Corporatenext
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