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Industry 4.0 or digitization, from a regional innovation system (RIS) and policy perspective to improve regional innovation, is over-looked. Specifically, this paper aims to focus on analyzing the nascent European Commission (EC) digital innovation hub (DIH) program, designed for fostering transition into Industry 4.0 in regions and facilitating new path development.

Empirically, 10 Spanish DIH is explored through interviews and secondary data analysis.

The results suggest that DIHs despite their emerging and trial-and-error stage are designed for promoting multi-actor collaborative platforms including non-local actors to stimulate transition into Industry 4.0 by promoting place-based collaboration alliances that respond to local/regional contextual specificities and demands. These regional-based platforms facilitate public-private partnerships that co-design policy initiatives resulting from co-participation and negotiation of spatially-bounded oriented initiatives for digitizing.

The authors answer: what are the key characteristics of emerging European-level regional innovation policies aimed at facilitating Industry 4.0 in regions? This is the first study on the topic.

This study aims to understand if and how European digital innovation hubs (DIHs) filling the role of knowledge brokers (KBs) can support the digital transformation (DX) of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by triggering open innovation (OI) practices.

After presenting a conceptual model of reference, a survey and a subsequent in-depth interview were conducted to capture evidence from Italian DIHs. These structures were selected for their growing importance, as confirmed by the National Plan for Industry 4.0.

The findings highlight that Italian DIHs act not only as KBs but also as knowledge sources that give rise to a digital imprinting process that is able to shape the DX of SMEs.

Research on knowledge sharing and OI has mainly focused on large firms. The study covers the gaps identified in the literature by considering the role of KBs in enabling SMEs to embrace DX.

The purpose of this paper is to fill a gap in the literature regarding the open innovation management approaches that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can use to access digital technologies and incorporate them into their organizational processes. The research question is: What organizational and process-level managerial actions do SMEs take to successfully access and implement digital technologies within their organizational processes?

Using Guertler et al.'s (2020) Action Innovation Management Research (AIM-R) framework, this study examines the digital transformation experiences of 10 European SMEs to gain insights into the managerial actions that foster successful digital transformation.

The findings of the paper reveal two major contributions. First, a digital transformation roadmap for SMEs is proposed, with a focus on accessing external resources and reconfiguring internal ones to ease their digital transformation journey. Second, three distinct paradoxes that influence the digital transformation process in SMEs are highlighted, providing useful insights into the challenges and tensions SMEs face during this journey.

This paper provides a unique perspective on the digital transformation of SMEs by examining the managerial actions required for successful technology adoption and revealing the paradoxes that may emerge during this transformative process. The findings form the basis for future research, deepening our understanding of digital transformation in SMEs and providing actionable advice to managers and practitioners navigating this journey.

In this study, the researchers explored the roles played by digital technologies and digital innovation (DI) in Pakistan's Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) companies' firm performance (FP).

The researchers used a quantitative study to gather cross-sectional data from employees working in Pakistan's ICT companies. The authors based this study's findings on 396 valid samples.

The structural equation modeling (SEM) findings underline that digital capability (DC), digital orientation (DO) and digital transformation (DT) have positive and significant effects on DI and FP. Moreover, there is a positive and significant relationship between DI and FP. Finally, DI mediates DC's, DO's and DT's associations with FP.

By committing to embracing new digital technologies and updating existing DCs to become innovation leaders and to improve FP, the findings will help sectors to take advantage of developing digital technologies and the trend toward digitalization. The results are also valuable for policymakers when considering if SMEs should be provided with more money for the digital up-skilling of their employees. Finally, this study's findings enrich the depth of literature about companies' use of digital technologies.

This study's empirical findings confirm the roles played by DC, DO and DT in improving DI and FP in a developing country such as Pakistan.

Firms are driven to ride on the digital wave in today’s open innovation ecosystem. This study aims to explore the effect of digital transformation (DT) on knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) firms’ innovation ambidexterity, namely, radical versus incremental innovation, respectively. Meanwhile, the authors evaluated the moderating role of the complexity of R&D collaboration portfolio (i.e. organizational diversity and geographic diversity) in the above relationships.

Using a panel data set of 171 Chinese listed firms in the information and communications technology services industry from 2010 to 2018, the proposed hypotheses were empirically attested.

It is found that DT has a positive relationship with radical innovation and an inverted U-shaped relationship with incremental innovation. In terms of the R&D collaboration portfolio, organizational diversity positively moderates the relationships between DT and innovation ambidexterity, respectively. The geographic diversity weakens the inverted U-shaped effect of DT on incremental innovation; however, its moderating role in the link between DT and radical innovation is not empirically verified.

Extant scholars mainly addressed the interplay between KIBS firms and their manufacturing clients, while this study reveals the different consequences of DT on KIBS firms’ innovation ambidexterity to highlight the role of KIBS firms is an independent and essential innovator in a knowledge-driven economy. Notably, the findings contribute to knowledge management (KM) and R&D literature by confirming the diversity of the R&D collaboration portfolio is a critical KM strategy for KIBS firms to develop and promote external knowledge resources.

This study aims to evaluate the knowledge structure of knowledge management (KM) applications within small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In pursuit of excellence, SMEs must adopt KM like large corporations, even with limited resources.

Through a bibliometric approach, this study evaluates current themes based on bibliographic coupling analysis and predicts future trends based on coword analysis. A total of 726 documents and 2,658 keywords were derived from the Web of Science database.

Findings show four clusters in bibliographic coupling and three in coword analysis. A common theme discovered converged on digital technology to ensure SMEs follow current market trends.

Advanced application of Industry 4.0 requires digital transformation for SMEs’ pursuit of excellence. Implications include sustaining SMEs through a considerable KM system integrated with digital technology for sustainable business activities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to provide a science mapping analysis on KM in SMEs by applying a bibliometric analysis.

Central banks from more than 100 countries, representing 95% of the global financial output, are studying Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). CBDCs can potentially enable safe, efficient and inexpensive cross-border and cross-currency payments in today's interconnected financial system. However, a critical factor influencing their expansion is cross-border interoperability. Therefore, there is a high demand from central banks, researchers, computer scientists, policy- and decision-makers to explore this topic further. Its better understanding will improve information management, enhance the decision-making process, and result in the redesign of central banks' processes and products (digital currencies).

The authors investigate this novel and timely topic by conducting a Multivocal Systematic Literature Review (MSLR) on CBDCs cross-border interoperability. Additionally, the authors collect and analyze empirical data from various online resources such as CBDC trackers.

The authors conclude that although the academic literature on CBDC cross-border interoperability is very limited, valuable documents published by central banks and other entities discuss this issue and provide valuable insights. The authors paid particular attention to the reports published by the Bank of International Settlement (BIS) as it proposes three different models for CBDC cross-border interoperability. The study research reveals that most CBDC cross-border interoperability projects run by several central banks and other organizations explore these three BIS models. For this research, the authors performed an in-depth study of CBDC cross-border interoperability cases to investigate all three BIS models. The findings illustrate that although technical interoperability is feasible, plenty of work needs to be done in terms of standards and interfaces. In addition, other non-technical interoperability areas need to be explored and addressed, as there are concerns related to legal issues, regulations, jurisdictional boundaries, policy challenges and governance.

Research on CBDCs is progressing quickly, so, despite the authors’ use of an MSLR to identify the state-of-the-art, interested parties should be aware that new information is prone to appear imminently. Hence, this study work should be understood as a basis to build upon. Also, although the authors have included major academic databases in this study search, there is the possibility that a few papers may have been published in outlets that the authors have not covered. Finally, since the search in the grey literature returned thousands of hits, the authors had to define a stopping criterion for the documents to analyze.

The authors provide insights on the current state of CBDC cross-border interoperability, which is valuable to policy- and decision-makers currently assessing the situation and deciding on avenues to pursue.

The authors provide an integrated and critical view of the developments of CBDC cross-border interoperability, considering not only available academic literature but also fundamental documents from key institutions such as central banks and related organizations.

Manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have already noticed the tangible benefits offered by artificial intelligence (AI). Several approaches have been proposed with a view to support them in the processes entailed in this innovation path. These include multisided platforms created to enable the connection between SMEs and AI developers, making it easier for them to network each other. While such platforms are complex, they facilitate simultaneous interaction with several stakeholders and reaching out to new potential users (both SMEs and AI developers), through a collaboration with supporting ecosystems such as digital innovation hubs (DIHs).

Mixed methods were used. The literature review was performed to identify the existing approaches within and outside the manufacturing domain. Computer-assisted telephonic (in-depth) interviewing , was conducted to include perspectives of AI platform stakeholders and collect primary data from various European countries.

Several challenges and barriers for AI platform stakeholders were identified alongside the corresponding best practices and guidelines on how to address them.

An effective approach was proposed to provide support to the industrial platform managers in this field, by developing guidelines and best practices on how a platform should build its services to support the ecosystem.

This paper aims to help small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to seize the potential of Big Data in their marketing strategies to leverage a competitive advantage in the rising digital marketplace and lead the post-pandemic economic recovery. However, Spanish SMEs have had serious difficulties in working with Big Data.

In this study, a roadmap is designed to pave the way for a successful Big Data implementation.

SMEs with updated information on how to access the historic funding opportunities might profit to this opportunity. It not only generates financing opportunities for SMEs but also grants continuity to their strategies by offering the most profitable techniques by which they can efficiently analyse data and gain consumer insights, thus overcoming the many problems they face when working with Big Data as well as helping them to monetise their marketing strategies.

The main advantage of this research is its innovative approach to business strategy as it provides. The value added by this paper lies in its holistic and updated approach to supporting SMEs’ Big Data strategies.