Big IFs in Productivity-Enhancing Industry 4.0

With the dawn of Industry 4.0, its productivity-boosting impact appears to be comfortably ensconced both in the media and in the scientific community. Still, our paper is to portend a rather dismal prognosis by outlining three big Inertia Forces (IFs) hindering the power of Industry 4.0 in reviving productivity growth in a more spectacular way. After applying a complexity view to the development of Industry 4.0 in deciphering the major IFs, the paper briefly exemplifies them by building on the case of Hungary, and it then draws some lessons for theorists and economic policy practitioners in the interest of a value-congruent development of Industry 4.0.