Coping with digitalization in operations processes: The role of design thinking

Based on an in-depth literature review of Design Thinking and Industry 4.0 concepts, we develop a methodology that supports companies in handling and defining a set of digital priorities and objectives aligned with their corporate business strategy and in deploying it into operative plans. This way companies are able to enhance the effectiveness of digital investments and select and exploit the most prominent and strategic ones for their business. A test of the advanced method is furthermore conducted in a sample of five non- competitive companies with the rationale of collecting empirical data on the ground to understand potentialities as well as limits of the proposed method.