The role of networking capability in the digital transformation journey

In recent years the focus of manufacturing firms towards digital transformation has increased. The development of digital transformation requires firms to take a new culture, new processes, new structures and new strategies. Digital Transformation involves changes in internal and external processes that allow firms to enhance the relationships with their customers. Taking into consideration the perspective of the Smart Factory, this latter goes beyond the more traditional automation, contemplating a fully connected, flexible and intelligent system, capable of generating new business models. Smart Factory can improve firms’ productivity by considering faster product development and design processes, mainly founded on new technologies. In this context the paper aims at analyzing the role of networking capability in the digital transformation journey. The paper is founded on an in-depth case study related to an Italian SME specialized in mechatronics. The paper investigates the networking capability in order to support the development of an innovative project in the mechatronics industry.