Economics of Development
Economics of Development
ISSN 1683-1942 e-ISSN 2304-6155 UDC 33
DOI: 10.63341/econ
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Digital-transformation analytics for developing-economy small enterprises: A complement-internalisation framework

Linara Bozieva*

linara@ravenopus.com

Received 15.04.2026, Revised 23.07.2026, Accepted 01.09.2026 Published 02.10.2026

Abstract

Analytics-led digital transformation has become a central instrument of small-enterprise growth, yet the frameworks that describe it were derived almost entirely from firms operating in advanced economies, where the environment supplies most of the assets that analytics requires. Recent statistical evidence has shown that connectivity and digital payment spread rapidly across developing economies over the past decade, while data systems, analytical skills and reliable last-mile infrastructure did not, which has left small enterprises exposed to transformation prescriptions their institutional environment cannot support. The purpose of the study was to develop a conceptual framework that explained analytics-led transformation in developing-economy small enterprises as the sequenced internalisation of the complementary assets that the surrounding institutional environment failed to supply. The study was designed as a theory-development critical review. A theoretical core was assembled from foundational works on complementary assets, absorptive capacity, dynamic capabilities and institutional voids, and a recent-evidence base was assembled through structured searches of scholarly databases across the publication years 2020-2026, restricted principally to peer-reviewed venues and to flagship international statistical reports. Four analytical stages produced the framework: constraint mapping, complement-class derivation, principle formulation and pathway specification. The analysis established four classes of missing complement, namely informational, human-capital, organisational and infrastructural, and specified an internalisation mechanism appropriate to each: self-instrumentation, absorptive-capacity bootstrapping, minimal co-invention and leapfrogging. The synthesis yielded the binding-complement principle, according to which the scarcest complement rather than technological ambition set the pace and the shape of transformation, and a cyclic pathway along which the binding complement migrated as each complement was relieved. The framework offers managers a diagnostic order of operations and policymakers a firm-level vocabulary for targeting ecosystem interventions. All illustration was hypothetical and no empirical data were reported


Keywords:

absorptive capacity; dynamic capabilities; self-instrumentation; technology leapfrogging; institutional voids; complementary assets; technology diffusion

https://doi.org/10.63341/econ/3.2026.08

Retrieved from Volume 25, No. 3, 2026

Pages 8-21

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Suggested citation

Bozieva, L. (2026). Digital-transformation analytics for developing-economy small enterprises: A complement-internalisation framework. Economics of Development, 25(3), 8-21. https://doi.org/10.63341/econ/3.2026.08