poor diffusion of icts thus contributes to a digital divide that can undermine policies aimed to stimulate growth and foster resilient economies and inclusive societies lack of access to digital infrastructures at competitive prices is the first barrier in particular access to icts such as mobile broadband including in rural and remote areas as well as access to data which are becoming an infrastructure for datadriven innovation ddi are crucial the lack of appropriate open standards and fears of vendor lockin often due to proprietary solutions are another barrier to adoption in particular for smes with the growth of digital security risks and concerns that privacy and intellectual property rights are violated and not sufficiently enforced lack of trust in the digital economy is also a potential barrier to adoption and use of icts across society the effective use of icts and data requires additional investments in complementary knowledgebased capital kbc in particular in organisationspecific skills and knowhow and in organisational change including new business models and processes