The transition to a digitally inclusive and knowledge-based rural society can be challenging. Digital hubs are often proposed as a way of overcoming digital exclusion in rural and small-town contexts, yet studies into how to set up such a hub in these challenging contexts are scarce. While hubs are usually associated with an urban environment, this case study deals with the development of a rural digital hub over several years in a small town in East Groningen (NL). In the context of an Interreg project, observations during project meetings, in-depth interviews and document analysis were conducted to closely monitor the hub’s development process. Initially, the hub initiators aimed at stimulating business activities and innovation linked to digital technologies. Thereby, an originally urban digital hub concept was copied into a rural context without a rural translation. Along the way, they were forced to adapt and scale down the scope of the project while at the same time, a broader target group had to be formulated. Moreover, the municipality lacked an overarching digital strategy, which compromised demand aggregation and supply synchronisation – two essential ingredients for rural digital hubs.

向数字包容性和以知识为基础的农村社会过渡可能具有挑战性。数字中心经常被提议作为在农村和小城镇环境中克服数字排斥的一种方式，但关于如何在这些具有挑战性的环境中建立这样一个中心的研究却很少。虽然枢纽通常与城市环境相关联，但本案例研究涉及在东格罗宁根 (NL) 的一个小镇多年来开发的农村数字枢纽。在 Interreg 项目的背景下，在项目会议期间进行了观察、深入访谈和文件分析，以密切监控中心的发展过程。最初，中心发起人旨在刺激与数字技术相关的商业活动和创新。从而，最初的城市数字中心概念被复制到农村环境中，而没有进行农村翻译。在此过程中，他们被迫适应并缩小项目范围，同时必须制定更广泛的目标群体。此外，该市缺乏总体数字战略，这损害了需求聚合和供应同步——农村数字中心的两个基本要素。