Rejuvenating SMEs in Italy Shrinking Villages through Digitalization
by Jonathan Goh, MCP’23 & Juanita Halim, MCP’24
Italy is aging faster than its EU peers. A shrinking and aging population is a significant worry for a stagnant economy like Italy. It is linked to failing productivity because of an aging workforce, an aging customer base, and a shifting global market. Our project seeks to understand the relationship between digital activity, internet connectivity, and small business development in Italy’s shrinking villages. By understanding this, we aim to develop an accessible digital toolkit for small businesses in Italy to scale up, as SMEs account for 66.9% of overall added value in Italy. We limited our area of interest to Lombardy and Sicily regions, specifically Sondrio and Enna Province. From our data findings, we found that currently, there is a gap in SMEs’ digital adoption in Lombardy and Sicilia region, with Lombardy now having better access to support SMEs to go digital. Engaging with small business owners in our research region, we are trying to understand further the problems they are currently facing and how digitalization can help their businesses thrive. Our key findings from the engagement were that while business owners use websites for some aspect of their businesses, the level of adoption varies, and small businesses see themselves as part of a larger ecosystem built on local connections to each other and to place.
In this practicum, we learned that the issue of shrinking is happening in these Small Villages, affecting small businesses’ economic development. Through visiting these small villages and closely engaging with small business owners, we are exploring ways to use digital toolkits to help these small businesses thrive.
Jonathan Goh & Juanita Halim