Digital innovation hubs supporting SMEs digital transformation

In today's manufacturing domain, companies need to be able to adopt digital technologies, joining the Industry 4.0 paradigm and, more in particular, the Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) revolution. However, several hurdles have been detected for companies' digital transition. Needing help to become more competitive by improving their business/production processes by means of digital technology, Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) have been identified as a strategic means to support companies' digital transformation, especially SMEs, and foster digital technologies' adoption in their business. However, the set of services provided by DIHs and composing their service portfolios still need to be clearly defined and adequately grouped to be then extensively considered in the DIHs. This paper presents a literature review to provide theoretical evidence and to raise the need to extend the traditional Ecosystem-Technology-Business (ETB)-based service portfolio of DIHs with two further dimensions: skills and data. This paves the way to the final consolidation, application and adoption of the forthcoming Data-driven Business-Ecosystem-Skills-Technology (D-BEST) reference model aimed at configuring DIHs' service portfolio and instantiating them from an Industry 4.0 digital perspective.