The greatest misconception about the Fourth Industrial Revolution is that it is, at its core, about technology. Indeed, the impressive array of technologies, ranging from AI and connected smart devices to nanotechnology do represent great potential but they will be unleashed only by applying a fundamentally different mindset from that of the previous age – the age of linear computerization. Each of the industrial transformations that humanity has so far experienced has been based on emergence. The phenomenal shifts of the Second Industrial Revolution that was ushered in by pioneers like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were accomplished through a new worldview, entrepreneurial developments, and a new operating system for production – the mass production line. The disruptions to emerge from Industry 4.0 are sure to come not from using smart devices to create faster products and processes, but to leverage them in dynamically reconfiguring systems based on the principle of emergence. With emergence, the holistic system takes on a fundamentally new nature which would not have been obvious by reductionist analysis of the constituent parts.

Emergence for Industry 4.0 is still on the way and these effects will certainly be seen in the form of dramatic changes in marketing and sales, customer relationship management, manufacturing, product development, production scheduling and operations management, supply chain management, and indeed all areas of the extended enterprise.