We examine whether the probability of innovating a company’s business model towards the Industry 4.0 paradigm is affected by external institutional support and family leadership. Industry 4.0 is the information-intensive transformation of global manufacturing enabled by Internet technologies aimed at reinventing products and services from design and engineering to manufacturing. Using a sample of 3000 firms from a corporate survey on the manufacturing industry in Italy, our results showed that family leadership has a significant positive influence on the adoption of Industry 4.0 business models, but only in terms of family ownership. By contrast, family management has a negative influence on the probability of adopting a new business model. However, this negative influence is almost totally offset by the presence of the Triple Helix, i.e. the external support by public institutions and universities, which counterbalances the lower propensity of family managers to adopt Industry 4.0 business models. This supporting role only occurs when institutions and universities act together.

我们研究了朝着工业4.0范式创新公司业务模式的可能性是否受到外部机构支持和家族领导的影响。工业4.0是通过互联网技术实现的全球制造业的信息密集型转型，旨在从设计，工程到制造业重新发明产品和服务。我们使用来自意大利制造业的公司调查中的3000家公司的样本，我们的结果表明，家族领导力对采用工业4.0商业模式具有显着的积极影响，但仅在家族拥有方面。相比之下，家族管理对采用新商业模式的可能性产生负面影响。但是，这种负面影响几乎完全被三重螺旋的存在所抵消，即 公共机构和大学的外部支持，这抵消了家族管理者采用工业4.0商业模式的较低倾向。仅当机构和大学共同行动时，这种支持作用才会发生。