Industry 4.0 innovations and their implications: An evaluation from sustainable development perspective

As the dyad of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and innovation have gained greater attention from researchers, practitioners and policy makers, integration of sustainability and sustainable development paradigms to this dyad have become fundamental to sustain businesses’ competitive advantage. A variety of I4.0 based innovations with several sustainability implications exists in the literature, but they largely address independent and distinct knowledge areas, which yields an opportunity to explore the interconnections of I4.0-innovation-sustainability nexus. Therefore, this research performs a systematic literature review to synthesize the nexus by investigating how a combination of I4.0 technologies and different types of innovations, could contribute to sustainable development thereby providing sustainability implications. Our review portfolio derived from three databases analyzed 58 journal articles that addressed the simultaneous links of I4.0-innovation-sustainability. The primary findings show that I4.0 results in various innovation types including process, product, business model, supply chain, organizational, open, and marketing innovations that advance triple bottom line (TBL) sustainability, circular economy (CE), sustainable business models (SBMs) and achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs). While most studies focus on process, product, and business model innovations with TBL and CE implications, more research is required to address the significant but overlooked areas such as open, organizational, and marketing innovations to advance business model sustainability and SDGs.