Industry 4.0 from An Entrepreneurial Transformation and Financing Perspective

This paper addresses the management of digital–informational transformation of industrial enterprises. Any transformation requires the coordinated action of several independent actors. Similarly, the digital–informational transformation required for the fourth industrial revolution (i.e., Industry 4.0) requires the involvement of multiple actors from the public and private sectors. This applies to an individual company as well as to the entire sector, regardless of the desired level of transformation. The increasing dissolution of boundaries between industrial and non-industrial actors is therefore essential for Industry 4.0. This paper addresses the above dissolution activities, focusing on cross-company networks and management issues. The management aspects of the following factors are examined: culture change, strategies, degree of digitalization, degree of networking, Internet of Things, digital ecosystems, human resources, organizational development, hierarchies, cross-functional collaboration, cost drivers, innovation pressures, supply chains, enterprise resource planning systems and corporate acquisitions/mergers. Based on the findings on the above factors, a management-driven model of the “transformation to Industry 4.0” for manufacturing companies is presented and discussed. This work thus complements the existing literature on Industry 4.0, as the majority of the literature on Industry 4.0 deals with technical problem solving at the field level.