PurposeThis paper proposes adequate strategies that companies, public administrators and organisations in the education industry can undertake to successfully face the challenges of digital transformation in a regional innovation system. This research considers stakeholders that operate in the Tyrol–Veneto macroregion (the Tyrol, South Tyrol and Veneto areas), a significant case of moderately innovative European macroregion.Design/methodology/approachThis study undertakes explorative research based on a qualitative method. It adopts a place-based multi-stakeholder approach to emphasise the role of three categories of stakeholders (companies, educational system and regional governments) in facing digital changes. More precisely, interviews with 60 stakeholders from the Tyrol–Veneto macroregion were conducted and examined via both text mining analysis and content analysis. First, correspondence factor analysis was performed using IRaMuTeQ software to identify homogeneous subsets of concepts (pillars–i.e., macroareas of strategic actions). Second, two coding phases were implemented using NVivo software to detect strategic fields of action and specific strategic actions undertaken to address the challenges of digital transformation.FindingsThe results highlight that digital transformation is a pervasive challenge of regional innovative system that requires a multifaceted set of strategic actions falling into three main pillars. The first pillar, named “culture and skills”, includes three strategic fields of action as follows: digital education, talents and digital culture. The second pillar, named “infrastructures and technologies”, points out the need of information, interaction and artificial intelligence as key strategic fields of action. The third pillar, named “ecosystems”, highlights the importance of investing in medium- to long-term visions, partnerships and life quality. In brief, this study shows that standalone interventions are insufficient to tackle digital transformation from a systemic perspective. Moreover, this study outlines the potential contribution of each category of stakeholder to foster the digitalisation of the Tyrol–Veneto macroregion.Practical implicationsThis study highlights the importance of developing digital culture and skills before investing in digital infrastructure and technology in a moderately innovative macroregion. Companies should alter their vision before reconfiguring their business models, invest in smart working and establish contacts with start-ups. In addition, this study recommends that public administration should mainly invest in digital education and partnerships, while, in terms of education and training organisations, it suggests providing digital skills to several cohorts of both students and workers. Policy implications call for the creation of new occasions of cooperation among stakeholders by fostering “table talks” as strategic and policy actions and by making more financial resources available to encourage the digital transformation processes.Originality/valueThe results of this study may be adapted to the characteristics of other regional innovative systems and used as a reference point in terms of the improvement of business, market and local development.

Far from being exclusively related to economic considerations, the advantages of Industry 4.0 applications also include environmental and social concerns. An increasing amount of scientific publications relate the implementation of the fourth industrial revolution paradigm to sustainability. Several studies reported opportunities of Industry 4.0 implementation particularly to the environmental dimension of sustainability, e.g., through improved logistics streams and lowered waste from production. The present research aims at providing evidence on whether manufacturing companies consider Industry 4.0 implementation as an advantage contributing to environmental and social sustainability in terms of lower environmental impact of production, as well as higher physical relief for workers and flexibility of work organisation. The results were an attempt to study such relations with company sizes, industry sectors, turnover and self-assessed levels of digitalization varying. The sample encompasses 65 companies located in the Marche region (Italy). The results show that overall the perception of economic opportunities prevail, while the association of a beneficial impact of Industry 4.0 on environmental sustainability is rather low across companies, regardless of their size, turnover and digital level. As for the statistically significant variables, the results suggest a strong association of the size and the digital level to specific Industry 4.0 related advantages, referring to the social and economic dimension of sustainability, respectively.

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In the future, long-established paradigms of production will still have to continue to change in order to meet the demand for even more individuality, customer-specific product variants and shortest delivery times within the meaning of the term "production on demand". Therefore, in the future, the concept of the Distributed Manufacturing by geographically distributed production systems plays an increasingly important role. New and innovative ways of organizing production operations will be needed. Particularly due to the increasingly loud request for a sustainable and ecologically production and distribution decentralized manufacturing systems are an ideal approach, because the production takes place closer to the customer. It needs modern organizational models for small, flexible and scalable production units in decentralized production networks, which take into account the local and individual customer needs and produce as possible locally. This paper presents the drivers for the trend towards decentralized and distributed manufacturing systems. In addition, the paper gives a complete overview of traditional and modern forms of geographically distributed production and the prospect of new and partly visionary development directions. The paper examines the range of the concept of Distributed Manufacturing starting from standardized factories to visionary generative manufacturing units according the concept of Cloud-Production.

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Industry 4.0 has attracted the attention of manufacturing companies over the past ten years. Despite efforts in research and knowledge transfer from research to practice, the introduction of Industry 4.0 concepts and technologies is still a major challenge for many companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Many of these SMEs have no overview of existing Industry 4.0 concepts and technologies, how they are implemented in their own companies, and which concepts and technologies should primarily be focused on future Industry 4.0 implementation measures. The aim of this research was to develop an assessment model for SMEs that is easy to apply, provides a clear overview of existing Industry 4.0 concepts, and supports SMEs in defining their individual strategy to introduce Industry 4.0 in their firm. The maturity level-based assessment tool presented in this work includes a catalog of 42 Industry 4.0 concepts and a norm strategy based on the results of the assessment to support SMEs in introducing the most promising concepts. For testing and validation purposes, the assessment model has been applied in a field study with 17 industrial companies.

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