What industrial change from ICT-based innovation? How information intensity has influenced industry dynamics in Italian industries

The nature of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) as a disruptive innovation has been so far studied more at the firm level than at the industry level. Also, more of the empirical evidence on the disruptive effects brought by ICT is for economies that are highly information intensive like the US. In this paper we try to bridge this gap analyzing 209 industries in Italy between 2002 and 2011. Our results suggest a significant effect of ICT on industry dynamics. Firstly, we find that information intensive industries showed a higher productivity, a higher market concentration and a greater profit dispersion compared to their counterparts, thus extending related studies that identify mechanisms for ICT- enabled value creation in US. Secondly, we do not find phenomena of hi-growth of small enterprises in information intensive industries as a consequence of the limited capability of Italian SMEs to use ICT to start hi-growth entrepreneurial ventures, differently from what happens in other countries.