Business Functions Varies across Firm Size

FIGURE 2.8 The Likelihood of Adopting Frontier Technologies for Sector-Specific Business Functions Varies across Firm Size

Estimated probability (%) 100 80 60 40 20 0

a1. Irrigation

Small Medium Large Firm size

Estimated probability (%) 100 80 60 40 20 0

b1. Input testing

Small Medium Large Firm size Estimated probability (%) 100 80 60 40 20 0

a. Agriculture a2. Harvesting

Small Medium Large Firm size Estimated probability (%) 100 80 60 40 20 0

b. Food processing (manufacturing)

Estimated probability (%) 100 80 60 40 20 0

b2. Cooking

Small Medium Large Firm size Estimated probability (%) 100 80 60 40 20 0

a3. Storage

Small Medium Firm size Large

b3. Packaging

Small Medium Large Firm size

Estimated probability (%) 100 80 60 40 20 0

c1. Merchandising

Small Medium Large Firm size Estimated probability (%) 100 80 60 40 20 0

c. Retail (services) c2. Inventory

Small Medium Large Firm size Estimated probability (%) 100 80 60 40 20 0

c3. Advertising

Small Medium Large Firm size

Source: Original figure based on Firm-level Adoption of Technology (FAT) survey data. Note: Estimated probability of technology adoption using sampling weights and controlling for country, firm size, and sector. Firm size refers to the number of workers: small (5–19), medium (20–99), and large (100 or more).

testing, cooking, packaging); and services/retail (merchandising, inventory, advertising). The gap between small and large firms in the likelihood of adopting frontier technologies in the functions related to food processing is larger than in agriculture and services.

Fact 6. The largest technology gaps occur within countries, not between countries.

Underlying the significant differences in the average technology sophistication across countries, regions, sectors, and firm size lies a large variation of sophistication