From Industry 4.0 to the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Abstract

The Industry 4.0 movement in Germany has attracted tremendous attention, with development of similar policies and programs all over the world. While Industry 4.0 is heralded as enshrining the technologies that will lead to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the essence of the technologies and the challenges involved in industrial and societal leapfrogging are not clear or well understood. This paper presents the key technologies supporting Industry 4.0, emphasizing how their relationships and synergies facilitate innovation. We elaborate on how such technologies will fundamentally change our economy from a “push” to a “pull” alternative, as already suggested by evolutionary models such as shared economy and outcome economy variants.