The industry 4.0 is another industrial revolution that has affected competencies, capabilities, innovation, and services by introducing new radical digital features: IoT, cloud computing, robot, and 3D printers.
The strong innovative wave is changing the manufacturing process through the passage from the traditional materials-product-recycle sequence to a quite different way that implies to use only what is useful to produce a good, without wasting any kind of materials. In Italy, the traditional system of small companies and artisans could suffer the threat from other countries. Craftsmanship and design have always been the main drivers of the process in the Italian SMEs: the required investments and high costs of the digital technology could reduce their possibility to face the challenges.
Also the Government is fully committed to the Digital Agenda: the issue is the amount of resources that should be enough to support the upcoming industry 4.0 with digital infrastructures (such as the broadband), and immaterial infrastructures (such as the training system). In particular, with regard to the last point, the capability of surfing the long wave of digital transformation will increase the competitiveness on the job market: according to the World Economic Forum, within 2020 in the OCSE Countries, 7 million job positions will disappear and 2 million new job positions will come out. Thus, traditional industrial standardized job positions will no longer exist. On the opposite side, the creative, emotional, and social domain will be essential to successfully compete on the job market. Also, the capability of storytelling and engaging will be essential.
In other words, as a result of the Industry 4.0, what has been called “soft” today would become “hard” tomorrow.