Going Digital: Field labs to accelerate the digitization of the Dutch Industry

This study focuses on how the Dutch Smart Industry field labs accelerate the digitization of the Industry. Smart Industry field labs are public private partnerships that develop, test and implement Smart Industry solutions. Typical field labs include users of such solutions, (potential) suppliers and knowledge institutes. Each field lab contributes to one or more Smart Industry transformations, such as smart products, servitization and digital factories. ICT is one of the key enablers for these transformations. This study provides insights on the creation process of the field labs, their main features (e.g. they work on average on 5-6 of the investigated activities per field lab, and address together more than 15 sectors etc.), their practice (they do not have a hierarchical organization structure and use a project based approach), international dimension (most of them cooperate with foreign partners) impact (e.g. jobs, spin-offs) and ICT developments. The study is based on an analysis of the 10 first established ‘field labs’ and shows the importance of these initiatives to accelerate the development of digital technologies on high and medium TRL level. The study indicates that more than 72 million Euros have been invested in these field labs since 2015 of which about 43% is private financing. The study also indicates that the investigated field labs have been able to generate impact on their innovation ecosystem: the 10 field labs have on average 8 projects and in total 5 spin-offs, 5 field labs mention that their partners generated on average 79 jobs per field lab, which is partly caused by the field lab, 7 field labs have on average 27 students per field lab and 4 field labs have on average 6 PhD’s per field lab. The study highlights three underlying ICT innovations (next generation factory automation & connected products, AI enabled digital infrastructures and data spaces for network centric collaboration) which are required to support the Smart Industry transformations. The study concludes that most focus in the analyzed field labs is currently on AI enabled digital infrastructures and network centric collaboration.