From Industry 4.0 to sustainable innovation ecosystems 4.0: what challenges for the innovation intermediaries?

What does “innovation ecosystem 4.0” really mean, particularly for key actors of innovation ecosystems such as innovation intermediaries? We assume that the public innovation intermediaries will have to take into account the sustainable perspective and reconsider their key missions in networking and in transferring knowledge and technology. After the identification of the new challenges due to some tensions between the implementation of the 4th revolution (Industry 4.0) and the operationalization of circular economy principles, we have chosen to investigate them, through the public intermediary organization, called Fil’innov, created in 2014 by the University of Nantes (West of France). Given its missions and central position within the innovation ecosystem, Fil’Innov has a major role to play, by orienting and supporting actors towards more sustainable innovation ecosystems. We use a Business Model approach to find out the first steps to promote this orientation towards the sustainable innovation ecosystem, “the Innovation ecosystem 4.0”.