Designing business models for Industry 4.0 technologies provision: Changes in business dimensions through digital transformation

Industry 4.0 (I4.0) literature has been concerned with how to implement digital technologies in manufacturing processes. However, the I4.0 concept also comprises broader changes in the company's business model (BM) through digital transformation, which deserves more attention, especially from the technology providers' perspective. As they are essential to advancing the digital transformation diffusion and creating I4.0 ecosystems, their business model innovation (BMI) in this context is a keystone for I4.0. Thus, we consider how changing factors in the I4.0 context affect the business model dimensions of technology providers. We analyze changing factors in the three main BM dimensions: front-end, back-end, and value proposition. We study ten I4.0 technology providers and explain the mechanisms of change involved in their BMI, explaining how and why such changes happen. The findings provide practitioners with insights to anticipate the necessary actions to manage and incorporate such changes, whether they rely more on data and IoT devices, new BMs such as training and consulting, dynamic pricing forms, new software/hardware, or service competencies. We also provide a detailed analysis of elements of change in the BM that can be used in theory to understand better the different digital transformation impacts in the Industry 4.0 context.