Lithuania scored highest in the EU for changes in the ICT startup environment, as reported in Digital Transformation Scoreboard 2017 survey, a Digital Entrepreneurship monitoring tool by European Commission.

Being one of the best in the European Union, Lithuania is exemplary for the high number of ICT Start-ups. ICT Startups in Lithuania create more and more jobs and consequently play a greater role in the employment share. Compared to other EU countries, Lithuania exceeds the EU average in four out of seven digital transformation areas. Furthermore, the government foresees different initiatives and programmes such as innovation vouchers to innovate and stimulate the uptake of digital technologies in the entrepreneurial environment. These initiatives also aim attackling the lower supply and demand of digital skills and boosting e-Leadership, two of the core challenges of the country, the report suggests.

Overall, Lithuania is performing well in fields related to digital development. It provides of a fairly advanced digital infrastructure, developed entrepreneurial culture and a high number of ICT Start-ups, the report claims.

Meanwhile, Lithuania’s challenges are in the fields of supply and demand of digital skills and e-leadership. However, given Lithuania’s relatively strong digital infrastructure, spill-over effects on the country’s performance in eLeadership and digital skills may occur.

In the field of investments and access to finance Lithuania shows a low performance. Despite the lack of finance and investments, Lithuania performs strongly in ICT start-ups. Given the country’s dynamic and uprising entrepreneurial culture, an improved finance and investment framework would have the potential to boost Lithuania’s digital transformation.

In comparison with other EU Member States, Lithuania is performing above the EU average in four out of seven indicators. Integration of digital technology is taking off with the increasing number of enterprises purchasing online in the last two years. Moreover, share of enterprises’ total turnover from e-commerce is also steadily growing. Entrepreneurial culture is showing better results than the EU average as over half of the employees are willing to be self-employed with or without governmental support. The entrepreneurial culture is also reflected in the high number of the newly-created ICT Start-ups. Lithuania performs moderately in e-Leadership in comparison to the EU average. Similarly, the supply and demand of digital skills along with the investments a  and demand of digital skills are subject for the improvement.

You can learn more by downloading the full report here.