# Collaborative Networks: A Pillar of Digital Transformation
## 1 Introduction  
The widely disseminated idea that we are at the beginning of a \"4 th industrial revolution\" has attracted considerable attention both from business and academia. This movement, often named as \"**Industry 4.0**\" or \"**Smart Manufacturing**\", became more visible after a program launched by the German government and the development of similar initiatives in USA and other countries [1, 2]. It was also encouraged by programs such as the \"Factories of the Future\" from the European Union [3]. The initial notion was primarily focusing the convergence of physical and virtual worlds, as represented by the term \"cyber-physical system (CPS)\", thus promoting a \"CPS-based industry\". Along these lines, even the term CPPS (cyber-physical production system) emerged [4, 5]. Soon this idea gradually developed into a combination of CPS, \"Internet of Things (IoT)\", and \"Internet of Services (IoS)\", showing an evolution towards digitalization or digital transformation. The initial perspective was further complemented with the facet of \"smartness\" or \"intelligence\" as shown by the terms \"smart machines\", \"smart sensors\", \"smart factory\", \"smart environments\", \"smart products\", etc. [6]. This industrial revolution, therefore, results from a close combination of contributions from different sub-fields of engineering, computer science, and more specifically artificial intelligence, and manufacturing. This trend induces several benefits, such as the \"creation of a momentum\" to drive a significant industrial transformation, upgrading, and even revitalization. This comes from leveraging the synergies of multi-disciplinary contributions, promoting wide multi-stakeholder discussions on new industry directions, sharing of experiences, and identification of new opportunities, as evidenced by the large number of academic and business-oriented publications on Industry 4.0. The wide interest for the area also created \"opportunities for attracting new political and financial support\" [7]. This is clearlyshown by the fact that many countries have launched specific development programs on Industry 4.0 and digital transformation. The same ideas are being adopted in many other sectors, becoming a kind of \"4.0 fever\", as illustrated by terms such as \"Economy 4.0\", \"Agriculture 4.0\", \"Health 4.0\", \"Water 4.0\", \"Education 4.0\", \"Tourism 4.0\", etc. To some extent, the term \"Industry 4.0\" became a buzzword [8], but also a trigger for the \"convergence and integration\" of a variety of new technologies and the deployment of new or revised manufacturing-related concepts, creating a kind of \"me too effect\". As a result of the growing attention, the scope of Industry 4.0 progressively increased, as if \"everything fits\", which makes the concept somehow elusive, often leading to misunderstandings and a proliferation of partial views. Despite the aforementioned benefits, there is also some risk associated with this transformation process. The hype created leads to an excess of expectations, and even to some of the hard challenges being overlooked. Furthermore, often newcomers tend to look at Industry 4.0 from the narrow perspective, limited by their field of interest, which may lead to some deviation from the original vision and aims. A warning signal is that some publications and talks in technical and business events sound like the 1980s discussions around the old \"computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM)\" concept, but now face-lifted with the use of some new technologies. In this article we argue that to adequately grasp the holistic vision brought in by Industry 4.0 and the associated digital transformation, it is beneficial to examine it through the lens of collaborative networks (CNs). Certainly, one may say that this is \"yet another partial view\".