Рathways for accelerated development of digital industries in emerging economies: a configurational analysis of leading internet platforms

Against the backdrop of rapid global digital technology development, emerging economies universally face challenges such as slow transformation of traditional industries and weak digital foundations, urgently requiring exploration of accelerated digital industrialization pathways suited to their specific conditions. This study aims to systematically identify the key condition combinations and implementation pathways driving the high growth of digital enterprises in emerging economies, exploring tailored accelerated digital industrialization paths for these economies amid traditional industry transformation slowdown and weak digital foundations. Based on the TechnologyOrganization-Environment (TOE) theoretical framework, the study adopts fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). It uses 2020–2024 financial data of 21 representative leading internet platform companies in emerging economies as observation samples to conduct configurational analysis of factors influencing the high growth of digital firms. The scientific significance of this work lies in breaking through the limitations of traditional single factor analysis, revealing the synergistic driving effects of multi-dimensional factors. Practically, it provides emerging economies with actionable insights for digital industrial policy design. The value of this research is its provision of a novel configurational perspective for digital industry studies in emerging markets, constructing four differentiated high growth pathways: scale driven, R&D supervision driven, lean R&D, and collaborative expansion. The practical implications suggest that no single factor is a necessary condition for high growth; instead, enterprises and policymakers should select tailored development paths based on technological endowments, organizational scale, and environmental characteristics, thereby accelerating digital industrialization in emerging economies.

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