back to article Congrats architects, PR bods, toolmakers - you're the new digital tycoons!

There are at least 40 per cent more companies that make up the UK's "digital economy" than any Government estimates, and those companies tend to be considerably more successful than non-digital companies, researchers have found. The study [43-page, 6.2MB PDF], commissioned by Google and produced by the National Institute for …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The trouble is the definition of a 'digital' business is so wooly.

    ""highly concentrated" levels of activity in regional areas including Basingstoke, Milton Keynes and Aberdeen. Manchester, Birmingham, Brighton and the South East of England"

    How is Cambridge and Bristol not in this list? There are really more digital firms in Aberdeen?

  2. Peter Johnston 1

    Basically the only non-digital organisation left is Government.

    Last as usual.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I have a digit to give the government...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The tulips

    are looking lovely this year.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Re: The tulips

      Or in other words DOT COM boom again?

  4. Kubla Cant
    Facepalm

    Define your terms

    At the end of this article, I still don't know what makes a company "digital". Is it:

    They manufacture digital hardware?

    They develop software?

    They sell hardware or software?

    They use the internet for e-commerce?

    They have a web site?

    They use email?

    They use a PC?

    They use another digital device such as a till or cordless phone?

    1. Peter2 Silver badge

      Re: Define your terms

      I think a digital company is an organisation offering a dynamic service based on web 2.0 technology!

      . . .

      In other words, a bunch of marketing types offering little of actual value. Examples:-

      1) "managing" an adwords account and charging 10% of the monthly spend. ( lol wtf? Why would you spend any significant amount without monitoring the spend YOURSELF?)

      2) "SEO work" with no improvement in search ratings or traffic.

      3) "traffic generation" to your website. (oh, you wanted real visitors not an automated stress test...?)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Re: Define your terms

      Looking at who commissioned this one 'Digital' would be anybody either ever has, is, or is considering paying Google?

  5. tomgatten

    Defining Terms

    Hi Kubla Cant,

    Tom from Growth Intelligence here. You're right. The article (which is otherwise great) doesn't mention the distinction between digital 'products', i.e. where the primary thing of value that the company sells is software and 'sectors'. This is really important in the report. i.e. when I signed up for a Register account just now, I had to select our business type as 'marketing and advertising'. We sell sales software, so marketing and advertising is kind-of right for our sector/industry. But our 'product type' is software so I think we should be counted in the 'digital economy', like loads of other companies as mentioned in the report.

    Of course, how you want to define 'digital economy' is down to you, but that's how we did it in this report.

  6. Regt4rd

    Hi Tom, thanks for engaging. Is it possible to find out from you why this study was commissioned by Google on behalf of the NIESR rather than directly by themselves. Google by their nature are probably the biggest player in this sector in the UK atm so their involvement as your bursar could be viewed as damaging to the reliability of your findings?

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