About
Why a Green, Digital and Competitive SME Index?
The Green, Digital and Competitive Index is a multi-year project intended to support SMEs in the twin transition and accompany the European Commission's European Green Deal programme. It starts from a premise well-known in management consulting: if you want to change something, measure it. Within that rubric, it takes an innovative look at SME performance at the national level in three key areas: 1) Green: How fast are SMEs moving to lower emissions and increase energy efficiency? 2) Digital: How quickly are those enterprises embracing modern technology across their organisations? And 3) Competitive: How quick are they growing and how well performing outside of home markets?
The project is managed and led by Lisbon Council Research, the scientific arm of the Lisbon Council, a Brussels-based think tank. The views presented are those of the authors.
The principal authors and project team would like to thank Amazon for its support throughout the project. Thanks as well to the numerous entrepreneurs who took time to share their experience – and to friends and associates who kindly critiqued early drafts and offered many useful suggestions. A full list is included in the acknowledgements section of the print edition. Any errors of fact or judgement are the authors’ sole responsibility.
Download The 2023 Green, Digital and Competitive Index
The 2022 edition is also available. Download The 2022 Green, Digital and Competitive Index.
For more on the Lisbon Council, visit https://www.lisboncouncil.net
Methodology
The Green, Digital and Competitive SME Index is a ranking composed of three pillars, nine indicators and 22 sub-indicators. The data used to build the index comes entirely from public sources. All scores are computed using the most recent data available at the close of 2022 (taking June 2023 as the data freezing point). The sub-indicator data ranges from the period 2020 to 2022, depending on the most recent year available for the sub-indicator in question.
| Pillar | Indicator | Subindicator | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| I. Digital Transition | I.1 SME Digitalisation | I.1.1 Data Analytics | Eurostat |
| I.1.2 Cloud Computing | Eurostat | ||
| I.1.3 Social Media | Eurostat | ||
| I.1.4 High Digital Intensity | Eurostat | ||
| I.1.5 ICT Security | Eurostat | ||
| I.2 E-commerce | I.2.1 E-commerce Sales | Eurostat | |
| I.2.2 E-commerce Turnover | Eurostat | ||
| I.3 Digital Skills | I.3.1 ICT Specialists | Eurostat | |
| I.3.2 ICT In-house | Eurostat | ||
| I.3.3 Training | Eurostat | ||
| II. Green Transition | II.1 Natural Resource Conservation | II.1.1 Consumption | European Commission |
| II.1.2 Recycling | European Commission | ||
| II.1.3 Circular Material Use Rate | Eurostat | ||
| II.2 Emission Reduction | II.2.1 SME Emissions | Eurostat | |
| II.2.2 Overall Change in Greenhouse Gas Emissions | Eurostat | ||
| II.3 Green Output | II.3.1 SME Green Products | European Commission | |
| II.3.2 SME in Green Sectors | Eurostat | ||
| III. SME Competitiveness | III.1 Exports | III.1.1 Exporting SMEs | Eurostat |
| III.1.2 SME International Trade | Eurostat | ||
| III.2 Productivity | III.2.1 SME Labour Productivity | Eurostat | |
| III.3 Growth | III.3.1 High-Growth Enterprises | Eurostat | |
| III.3.2 High-Growth Employment | Eurostat |
The main aggregation method used is the arithmetic average. All pillars, indicators and sub-indicators have been assigned equal weights in the aggregation process. Therefore, an indicator's performance is computed as the arithmetic average of the sub-indicators included in the indicator. Similarly, a pillar's performance is the arithmetic average of the indicators included in the pillar. The overall assessment of a country is the arithmetic average of the component pillars.
From an aggregation perspective, the normalisation method used to standardise the sub-indicators' values is the min-max, with a normalisation range of 10 to 100. For the majority of the sub-indicators (20 of 22 indicators), the highest value corresponds to the best performance (100 points), while the lowest value is considered the worst performance (10 points). For two sub-indicators, II.2.1 SME Emissions and II.2.2 Overall Change in Greenhouse Gas Emissions, the method is reversed: the lowest value gets the highest score (100 points) and the highest value gets the lowest one (10 points).
You can directly comment on the indicators and methodology at https://makingspeechestalk.com/ch/GDC/?id_speech=79
Sources
The Index and dashboard are based entirely on official, publicly available data from the European Commission and Eurostat. The following publications and databases served as the key reference points. The date of access, where relevant, is included as well.
European Commission. Flash Eurobarometer 498: SMEs, Green Markets and Resource Efficiency (Brussels: European Commission, 2022)
Eurostat. Digital Economy and Society, Information and Communication Technology Usage in Enterprises, online version, accessed June 2023
--------------. Sustainable Development Indicators, Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production, online version, accessed June 2023
--------------. Sustainable Development Indicators, Goal 13: Climate Action, online version, accessed June 2023
--------------. Structural Business Statistics, online version, accessed June 2023
--------------. Air Emissions Accounts, online version, accessed February 2023
--------------. Annual National Accounts, online version, accessed June 2023
--------------. International Trade in Goods, online version, accessed June 2023