Industry 4.0 and transformative regional industrial policy 1

Abstract

The introduction of the Smart Specialisation Strategy in the 2014–2020 cycle marked a further step change as European Union (EU) policy became very much a growth-driven policy or a regional-level innovation policy. This chapter focuses on the extent to which technological change will require adjustments to EU regional and cohesion policies in order to allow the latter to have a ‘transformative’ power. It reviews current levels of digital disparities and considers the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on spatial disparities going forward. The chapter discusses a ‘call to arms’ for a transformative industrial policy given the scale of change coming. The simultaneous processes of internal deepening and enlarging together with austerity post-2008 left some EU Member States and regions on a path of virtual zero growth for almost a decade. The concept of smart specialisation was introduced in the late 2000s as a new way of tackling regional development.