Since Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum declared the arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, there has been much discussion about it. However, there is no commonly agreed-upon definition of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Therefore, we attempted to answer the following four research questions. “What is the definition of the Fourth Industrial Revolution?”, “How can we respond to the Fourth Industrial Revolution in terms of institutions?”, “How can we respond to the Fourth Industrial Revolution in terms of technology?”, “How can we respond to the Fourth Industrial Revolution in terms of firm innovation and start-up strategy?” Brainstorming was conducted by 11 scholars from several countries to answer these four research questions. Therefore, this research is not the end product of four research questions, but a kind of advanced template to answer the four research questions for continuing research.

Culture, in its various forms, has always been a critical driver of innovation. This paper focuses on generating some insights into the role of “culture for open innovation dynamics”. First, because the requirement to understand culture, which can control open innovation complexity, has been augmented, we want to answer the following research question in this study: How can we define or organize “culture for open innovation dynamics”, which can motivate open innovation dynamics, and control open innovation complexity? Second, we propose a concept model of culture for open innovation dynamics by reviewing the literature on the culture of firms in terms of their traits, organization, static innovation, and dynamic aspects regarding their innovation in entrepreneurship, and we validate said model through an indirect social experiment using the research results of 23 Special Issue papers. Third, the concept model of culture for open innovation dynamics is explained as the interaction between three different entrepreneurship dimensions: Entrepreneurship of novice entrepreneurs, intrapreneurship of employees of an existing firm, and organizational entrepreneurship by the firm itself. According to the balance of three sub-entrepreneurship types, culture for open innovation dynamics can have different aspects, namely, entrepreneurship leading culture for open innovation dynamics, intrapreneurship leading culture for open innovation dynamics, or organizational entrepreneurship leading culture for open innovation dynamics. This paper helps organizations and entrepreneurs to better understand the role that culture plays in boosting open innovation dynamics.

This paper explores how sustainability can be achieved through open innovation in the current 4th industrial revolution. Through a literature and practice review, we identify micro- and macro-dynamics of open innovation in addition to the dynamic roles of industry, government, university, and society. In particular, the industry continuously adopts open platforms to create and maintain ecosystem innovation. The government’s role has changed from regulation control toward facilitation. Universities have become proactively engaged in multiple areas, from technology transfer to knowledge co-creation. Societies and customers have started to form new concepts, R&D, and commercialization, resulting in a shared economy. Based on the analysis, we propose a conceptual framework to understand open innovation micro- and macro-dynamics with a quadruple-helix model for social, environmental, economic, cultural, policy, and knowledge sustainability. Furthermore, this provides an overview of the special issue, “Sustainability of Economy, Society, and Environment in the 4th Industrial Revolution”, which aims to respond to the 4th industrial revolution in terms of open innovation and cyber-physics from manufacturing to the service industry.

We created conceptual models that people may use to analyze and forecast the dynamic effects of open innovation, which we applied to the smartphone sector using a model-based analysis approach. In addition, we built an open innovation simulation model for the smartphone sector. The dynamic model of open innovation linked logic and concepts relating to open innovation, complex adaptive systems, and evolutionary change. The model can be used to analyze the dynamic effects of open innovation strategies and open innovation simulation for the selection of future strategies.