Integrating Industry 4.0 plans into regional innovation strategies

The article aims to shed light on why and how Smart Specialization Strategies in European countries can promote the development of Industry 4.0 actions in the next programming period 2021-2027. Smart Specialization Strategies could hold a strategic function in the adoption of Industry 4.0 by supporting technological innovation based on the potential of each territory. An integration of Smart Specialization Strategies and Industry 4.0 could be achieved by leveraging on the common collaborative approaches of the two policies, which call for the involvement of multiple stakeholders in their definition and implementation, as national and regional institutions, academia, firms and user. In order to identify enablers that can favour the integration of the two policies, empirical evidence is retrieved from selected technical reports, events and news press from the Smart Specialization platform. Based on the findings, future directions for guiding the revision of the Smart Specialization Strategies towards effectively embedding Industry 4.0 are presented.