# Collaborative Networks: A Pillar of Digital Transformation
## 5 Relevant Collaboration Aspects in Industry 4.0
### Collaboration in New Business Models  
The possibilities offered by ICT and mobile technologies, allowing for high levels of interconnection among people, organizations, and systems, naturally inspire the emergence of new business opportunities supported by new business models. In a way, the horizontal integration dimension is extended by exploring the potential of collaboration along the value chain. This dimension corresponds to a very dynamic area where innovative solutions are likely to emerge at a fast pace. The following examples clearly illustrate the need for collaborative approaches in this area (Figure 10):  
* Collaborative engagement of customers, namely in the process of co-design/co-creation of products and services, is becoming very relevant. The term \"customer intimacy\" is often used to reflect  
Figure 9: Collaboration in smart products and services.  
this trend. This collaboration is not necessarily restricted to the one-to-one model, but rather extending to a community context. To improve customers' experience, especially in the context of global markets, it is also necessary to pursue close collaboration among all stakeholders in the value chain.
* Investing in global markets while considering the local specificities, as reflected in the neologism \"glocal enterprise\", while also satisfying higher demands for transparency and compliance, can only be effectively achieved if resorting to collaboration among global manufacturers/producers and local suppliers/service providers as well as other organizations (e.g., regulators) operating near the customer.
* Progressing towards \"servitization/product-service systems\" demands tight collaboration between manufacturers and service providers.
* Coping with concerns of sustainability, transparency, and increasing social responsibility, that more and more challenge the business world, require strong collaboration ties between industrial companies and other societal entities. Hybrid value chains, which combine for-profit with not-for-profit entities, are a significant example.  
What Can CNs Contribute?  
Various examples illustrate the importance of CNs contribution to new business models:  
* A large variety of goal-oriented networks have been established in a wide variety of industry sectors [112], providing a good experimental basis for new developments.
* The engagement of customers in (networked) co-creation processes has been pursued in multiple areas, e.g., consumer goods sector [72; 113], solar energy [86], etc. Collaboration in co-innovation and open innovation networks is also an active research topic [111].
* Collaborative networks have been suggested as an effective way for the materialization of the \"glocal enterprise\" concept [106].
* The contribution of CNs to the development of product-service systems/servitization has been thoroughly discussed in the literature and various demonstrative experiments have been developed [91; 107].  
Figure 10: Examples of collaboration in new business models.  
New collaboration models have been proposed for non-hierarchical and dynamic value chains [73].
* The potential contributions of CNs to sustainability can be found in various works, e.g., [66; 114]. This issue has been even the main theme of some conferences [115].
* The concepts of green virtual enterprise and green enterprise breeding environment have been proposed and characterized [71].
* CNs in the implementation of the circular economy [69].