Industry 4.0 Adoption In Manufacturing Smes: Exploring The Role of Industry and Regional Scale In Northern Italy

Industry 4.0 highlights the advantages for manufacturing firms of advancing business processes and creating new sources of value creation. However, industry specificity may influence the paths of adoption due to the variety of processes considered. Moreover, regional studies stress the link between regional embeddedness, the organization of manufacturing activities and innovation dynamics. This paper explores such relationships based on an original survey of 205 SMEs operating in the Made in Italy sectors and located in Northern Italy. The results reveal the role of both industry and the region in which the firm is located in explaining the differences in terms of Industry 4.0 adoption.