Industry 4.0 and its impact

Industry 4.0‚ which appeared at the German Hanover Fair in 2011 as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, took pride of place at the Davos World Economic Forum in January this year. Is it merely a political show, or did fear of a Google hegemony make the German government, industrialists and research institutes go on the offensive?  What are the changes which the digital sector is making for medium-sized businesses, and how do these changes manifest themselves? What strategies do they prompt? Should France be alarmed that it may lag behind? Dorothée Kohler and Jean-Daniel Weisz carried out about sixty interviews with people involved in Industry 4.0 in order to make sense of the current changes‚ their potential impacts on the German model, and ways in which French industry might draw inspiration from them.