Does regional innovation policy really work for Industry 4.0? Evidence for industrial districts

ABSTRACT

Industry 4.0 threatens established lock-in paradigms in some districts. In this study, we compare different innovation policies aimed at facilitating Industry 4.0 awareness and its adoption in three Marshallian Industrial Districts (MIDs), asking: ‘What’ types of innovation policies work for Industry 4.0 in industrial districts? And, where they do, ‘how’ are those innovation initiatives designed, developed and implemented for digitizing districts? Using qualitative evidence based on 24 interviews and the review of existing literature concerning Industry 4.0 in three MIDs, results show different mechanisms and approaches for creating awareness and maximizing the diffusion of Industry 4.0 in each district, as a result of each local ‘cognitive structure’. One size-fits-all policies are not realistic for digitization: collective actors leading place-based collective actions that are bottom-up and co-designed with public and private local actors is what works best. For policymakers, this study presents guidance for developing Industry 4.0 in MID settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Industrial districts
• Industry 4.0
• place-based innovation policy
• collective actions

JEL:

• O3
• R1

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 See more on the differences between digitization and digitalization (e.g. Yoo et al. 2012).

2 https://s3platform.jrc.ec.europa.eu/digital-innovation-hubs.

3 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/industrial-strategy-building-a-britain-fit-for-the-future.

4 https://catapult.org.uk/.

5 Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (2017). Catapult Program: A Framework for Evaluating Impact. Retrieved from: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/662319/catapult-programme-evaluation-framework.docx.pdf.

6 From local endogenous and incremental learning, Mark III category goes to more show district openness to connect to trans-local and trans-international value chains, servitization, multinational companies and more radical changes. See more in Bellandi’s works.

7 https://www.redit.es/en/home/

ITC: Ceramics Technology Institute; Inescop: Footwear Technology Institute; AIJU: Toys and Plastic Technology Institute.

8 https://www.ivace.es/images/Industria_4.0/Agenda_Industria_40_CV_v0_web.pdf.

9 See Staber (2009).

10 Based on Hervás-Oliver (2022).

11 See more here: https://ceria.es/category/itc/.

Additional information

Funding

Financial support from AICO2020/123 (Consolidables, Generalitat Valenciana); RTI2018-095739-B-100 (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Gobierno de España, AEI/EU FEDER); PID2021-128878NB-I00 (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Gobierno de España, AEI/EU FEDER). Also, Dr. Hervas-Oliver acknowledges funding from Generalitat Valenciana, for visiting research period at University of Padova, 2022 (CIBEST/2021/238).