The Smart Factory: Exploring an Open Innovation Solution for Manufacturing Ecosystems

Companies, cities, regions and ecosystems are facing increasing challenges due to issues as globalization, competitive pressures, and increased digitalization. At the same time, these issues give rise to an open innovation model that relies on the increased connectivity between various stakeholders to collectively develop better product, services, processes and business models. Such more open models have to support the development of different types of platforms, devices and features that allow for better connectivity, but also create challenges in terms of developing, implementing and understanding such approaches. However, while the emerging literature in open innovation has considered some of these aspects, the notion of openness for process technologies, especially in the context of business ecosystems, is not yet fully understood. With the increasing interest in “smart cities” in the background, we therefore explore how such (combinations of) ecosystems could support a collaborative manufacturing solution — what we may call a “smart factory”.

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