Fostering innovation through Industry 4.0 technologies in emerging countries: An explorative multiple case study of Indonesian Internet-of-Things (IoT)-based start-ups

The Industry 4.0 phenomenon is truly remarkable in the industry’s redesign and the transformation of different facets of human life. This trend has also been put on several nations’ national agenda, both emerging and developed, to improve competition in the global business arena. For Indonesia, this phenomenon offers a chance to reshape Indonesia’s manufacturing industry and become another way to boost Indonesia’s goal of being the 10th world’s largest economy. One of the technologies that play a significant role in this phenomenon is Internet-of-Things (IoT) that could boost small businesses’ performance through developing its innovation ecosystem. This research seeks to propose continuous innovation pathways through case studies of functional IoT in Indonesian start-ups. To this end, we use an exploratory research methodology and in-depth interviews to identify IoT and case studies’ fundamental innovation capabilities to explore the process of connecting these attributes to innovation. It results in five factors as main findings to influence the innovation performance: financial resources, government role, perception for supporting small businesses, hybrid research and development, and business model innovation. We also derive the implication of IoT for businesses and the government to support their innovation.