The Role of Open Innovation and Value Co-creation in the Challenging Transition from Industry 4.0 to Society 5.0: Toward a Theoretical Framework

Advanced manufacturing solutions, augmented reality, and cloud and big data are technologies pertaining to Industry 4.0. These technologies improve working conditions, create new business models, and increase both productivity and firm quality production. However, they can also improve life and society as a whole. This new perspective, oriented toward social and global well-being, is called Society 5.0. As has happened for all past industrial revolutions, Industry 4.0 will support the transition to a different society, i.e., Society 5.0. In this transition, open innovation and value co-creation can play an important role. The aim of the study was twofold: to examine how Industry 4.0 features and enabling technologies can support the transition to Society 5.0 and to investigate the roles of both open innovation and value co-creation within this transition. A conceptual framework was developed to jointly consider for the first time Industry 4.0, Society 5.0, open innovation, and value co-creation, which are all challenging issues that firms must cope with nowadays. Managers could profit from these insights to design ad hoc strategies in order to benefit from the opportunities emerging from this transition and overcome the main related challenges.