Digital Business in the Cyber Economy: The Organization of Production and Distribution Based on the Breakthrough Technologies of Industry 4.0

Purpose: The purpose of this chapter is to develop a conceptual model of the organization of production and distribution based on the breakthrough technologies of Industry 4.0 within the sphere of digital business. Design/methodology/approach: The authors use the case method to perform an overview of the level of automatization in sales and purchases within the Russian economy in 2018 based on the statistical data of the National Research University “Higher School of Economics.” It is determined that the automatization of only two business processes in modern Russia is frequent: purchases and sales. Digital business is becoming more prevalent in the service sector, but the pre-digital mode of business structure is still preserved in industry. Findings: The sectoral specifics of the automatization of business processes are determined based on breakthrough technologies of Industry 4.0, which should be taken into account during the statistical accounting of digital business. The following essential differences of digital business from pre-digital business are determined: complex offers, automatic internal and external communications, the organization of information processing using Big Data technologies, and the increasingly complex demands on management. Originality/value: It is shown that digital business is a complex system that consists of many interconnected elements that are integrated through the breakthrough technologies of Industry 4.0. A conceptual model for the organization of production and distribution based on the breakthrough technologies of Industry 4.0 within digital business is developed. The advantages of digital business are shown: high effectiveness, a reduction in resource use, holistic consideration of individual consumer preferences even in the case of mass offers, and sustainable development due to continuous automatic crisis management.