Abstract:

Although COVID-19 has accelerated this, a change in business has been in the making for more than a decade. This change is mainly driven by a technological revolution, stemming from the massive adoption of technology where companies will digitise faster, adopting fully digital technologies and ways of working to transform their business models and generate new revenues.

These transformations are already impacting on all companies, but SMEs are probably the most affected segment: unfortunately, many are disappearing, almost all of them experiencing great difficulties, but many others have been able to take advantage of the changes to adapt to the "new normal", emerging stronger and occupying a position they could not have imagined a few years ago.

For SMEs, going digital means being prepared to telework; personalise and improve the response times of customer service systems; migrate systems to the cloud; have cybersecurity measures in place to protect the integrity of the company; rethink and automate their core processes and make data-driven business decisions. Technologies such as Cloud, IoT, Cybersecurity, Robotics, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data are the enablers of transformation for SMEs and must be integrated as part of the company's DNA.

The main challenge of digitalization, however, is in its uptake. Often SMEs see digitalization itself as the goal, which it is not. It is the means to transform and become more agile, flexible and innovative, for which the management of the company must understand the technology and how it is best implemented within their company. Therefore, the digitalisation plan must be founded on the redesigning the company. The real key to the success of any company must be the quality of its leaders and the talent they are able to attract and link to the desired objective.

Under this context, the GIST project is born, made up by 6 partners from 6 European countries (Germany, Belgium, Croatia, Slovenia, Spain and Poland), whose objective is to provide through innovative training material the key competences that companies, especially SMEs from furniture sector, need to have a digital and bionic transformation that covers three aspects: technical competences related to the Key Enabling Technologies of Industry 4.0; soft and transversal skills that foster creativity, innovation and communication among staff; and finally, open leadership skills with commitment to the company, its employees and society.

Keywords:

SMEs, bionic, digitalisation, Industry 4.0, leadership, talent, technologies, COVID-19.