Systematic Literature Review About Sustainable Business Models and Industry 4.0

Abstract

All over the world, Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and Sustainable Development (SD) have progressively gained the interest of scholars, politicians, and other parts of society. Besides being two of the most debated topics of the last decades, they also have overlaps between their independent research fields. Some examples are reductions of environmental impacts and improvements in production technologies. This integration of technologies and sustainable advances within an industrial context can enable a set of important competitiveness forces, which results can reflect in business improvement. However, the link between I4.0, SD, and business still needs a broader understanding. Basing on this perspective, this paper proposes an update of a systematic literature review to monitor the development of the topic and to check if there has been any progress, as well as to verify whether the findings are still valid. Results point to that there are seventeen research opportunities, showing the potential of I4.0 as an enabler of sustainable business models that changes the responsibilities of companies.