Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca / cc by-nc-nd The role of Artifcial Intelligence and distributed computing in IoT applications, pp. 55-68 [55] DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14201/0AQ02875568 THE IMPORTANCE OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION. INCIDENCE OF THE DIGITAL ECONOMY AND SOCIETY INDEX (DESI) IN THE GDP OF THE EUROZONE ECONOMIES Javier P arra; Eugenia Pérez; Jorge González & Juan Manuel Corchado BISITE Digital Innovation Hub, University of Salamanca, Edifcio Multiusos I+D+I, 37007, Salamanca, Spain javierparra@usal.es Abstract: In recent years, numerous researches have studied the relation- ship between the so-called technological indicators and the social development of different countries. The main motivation of this study has been to fnd out whether there is a relationship between the variables of the DESI technological indicator and this year’s GDP per capita. The existence of such a relationship has been identifed and it has been discovered that it is directly related to the use of internet services by citizens and to the implementation of technology in companies. Keywords: DESI; GDP; technology; digital transformation. 1 Introduction Over the past few years, companies in almost every industry have carried out a series of initiatives to develop new digital technologies and explore their benefts [1-12]. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are the merg- er between new digital technologies and traditional industrial production, leading to the emergence of what we know today as Industry 4.0 [13-20]. The concept of industry 4.0 has allowed to transform factories into intel- ligent environments where information, objects, and people are connected thanks to the convergence between the physical and the virtual world through cyber-physical systems [21-29].