In the European Union alone, around 80% of industrial data remains unused, limiting competitiveness, resilience and sustainability – a pattern repeated worldwide. Across company boundaries, this problem deepens: misaligned incentives, uneven digital maturity and growing cybersecurity risk trap value that could come from optimizing energy, infrastructure, logistics and resources across the ecosystem.
Written by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with Accenture, Intelligent Industrial Ecosystems: Turning Proximity into Intelligence offers a practical framework for turning data into value. It outlines three stages – value case, enablement and execution – underpinned by four foundations: data governance, data readiness, technology and cyber resilience.
Case studies, including the Port of Rotterdam, show what’s possible: early trials delivered around 5% efficiency gains, with modelling suggesting deeper collaboration could unlock far more. Grounded in these lessons, the report charts a path for industrial ecosystems to move from isolated optimization to connected, intelligent and sustainable growth.