Industry 4.0 technologies adoption: barriers and their impact on Polish companies’ innovation performance

ABSTRACT

The adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies is a priority from the perspective of firms’ innovation performance. Nevertheless, enterprises’ efforts to follow the pace of digital transformation may be inhibited by several factors. The goal of our study is twofold. First, we try to identify and characterize the barriers businesses face in the implementation of Industry 4.0 technologies, investigating the barriers’ impact on the adoption of I4.0 tools. Second, we seek whether the higher level of adoption is followed by the enterprises’ enhanced innovation performance. To that end, we combine a critical literature review with quantitative empirical research. The latter was conducted on a representative sample of 400 Polish manufacturers. The most popular I4.0 technologies implemented by the companies were cybersecurity and social media solutions. The most important barriers were administrative processes and capital expenditures associated with the implementation of Industry 4.0 solutions. Firms’ greater involvement in innovations is followed by their more intensive implementation of Industry 4.0 technologies and the awareness of higher barriers. This study adds to the debate on barriers of innovative processes in companies and allows to draw conclusions valid for firms and policy makers.

KEYWORDS:

• Industry 4.0
• technology adoption barriers
• innovation performance
• Poland

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• O33
• M15
• M19

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank anonymous referees for their valuable comments that helped them improve the quality of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://stat.gov.pl/obszary-tematyczne/nauka-i-technika-spoleczenstwo-informacyjne/spoleczenstwo-informacyjne/wykorzystanie-technologii-informacyjno-komunikacyjnych-w-jednostkach-administracji-publicznej-przedsiebiorstwach-i-gospodarstwach-domowych-w-2020-roku,3,19.html

Additional information

Funding

The study was conducted within the research project Economics in the face of the New Economy financed within the Regional Initiative for Excellence programme of the Minister of Science and Higher Education of Poland, years 2019-2022, grant number 004/RID/2018/19, financing 3,000,000 PLN.