Maximizing the Return on Digital Investments

The report analyzes data from over 16,000 companies to determine how digital investments affect productivity. It finds that while overall returns are positive, gains are concentrated among industry leaders and vary significantly by industry type and technology category. The paper argues that maximizing value requires a combination of technologies and five key enablers: agile leadership, a forward-looking skills agenda, ecosystem thinking, robust data management, and technology infrastructure readiness.

• The overall return on investment for new technologies is positive, with the most significant productivity gains occurring when technologies are deployed in combination rather than as stand-alone investments. Specifically, combined deployments are estimated to deliver labour productivity increases three times higher than stand-alone investments.
• Productivity gains from digital investments are unevenly distributed; industry leaders (the top 20% of companies by productivity in each industry) achieve a much higher productivity increase from new technology than followers, with a ratio of 70% versus 30%.
• The value derived from specific technologies depends on the nature of the industry. Asset-heavy industries (where capital expenditure is more than 7% of the sum of capex and opex) realize more value from robotics, while asset-light industries realize greater value from mobile and social media.
• While industry leaders see higher returns from robotics and mobile/social media, industry followers have gained more from cognitive technologies (AI and big data analytics) and the internet of things (IoT).
• Corporate spending on new technologies is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13% from 2016 to 2020, reaching $2.4 trillion per year, with IoT expected to account for 42% of total spend in 2020.
• Five key enablers are identified to maximize digital returns: agile and digital-savvy leadership, a forward-looking skills agenda, ecosystem thinking, data access and management, and technology infrastructure readiness.
• Successful execution of digital investments requires four guiding principles: establishing clear ownership, investing in specific use cases rather than individual technologies, following an outcome-based approach, and adopting a 'fail fast, fail cheap' mentality.

APA

World Economic Forum (2018). Maximizing the Return on Digital Investments. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/DTI_Maximizing_Return_Digital_WP.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Maximizing the Return on Digital Investments. 2018. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/DTI_Maximizing_Return_Digital_WP.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Maximizing the Return on Digital Investments |date=May 2018 |url=http://www3.weforum.org/docs/DTI_Maximizing_Return_Digital_WP.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2018maximizing, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Maximizing the Return on Digital Investments}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2018}, month = may, url = {http://www3.weforum.org/docs/DTI_Maximizing_Return_Digital_WP.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }