The Impact of the 4th Industrial Revolution on the High-Tech Industry

Abstract

The challenges of  the 4th Industrial Revolution (I40) entail new business models to improve customer value creation. So far, academic investigation into I40 has been extensively focused on large enterprises, and only marginally on SMEs. The present paper aims to answer to the following four research questions: How do manufacturing SMEs perceive the I40 phenomenon? How do manufacturing SMEs innovate their business models because of I40? How do manufacturing SMEs behave with their suppliers because of I40? How do manufacturing SMEs behave with their customers because of I40?