Go your own way: Managerial engagement with regional innovation ecosystems for Industry 4.0 transformation in Belgian SMEs

Abstract

While Industry 4.0 (I4.0) has led to the proliferation of policy-driven innovation ecosystems aimed at supporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in their digital transformation, limited attention has been paid to how managers engage with these environments in practice. This study examines how SMEs’ managers interpret, evaluate, and mobilise external support within I4.0 Regional Innovation Ecosystems (I4.0 RIE). Drawing on 25 semi-structured interviews with managers of industrial SMEs in Belgium, we adopt a sense-making perspective to analyse engagement as an interpretive process. The findings show that managers approach these ecosystems as overlapping support mechanisms, which they evaluate in terms of accessibility and usability and enact through selective, adaptive, and sometimes reversible patterns of access and use. These findings suggest that engagement with I4.0 RIE is not driven by the availability of support alone, but by how managers interpret and position it in relation to their firms’ needs and constraints. By foregrounding these dynamics, the study offers a processual view of how SMEs engage with innovation ecosystems under digital transformation.