data Review Innovation Trajectories for a Society 5.0 Fabio De Felice, Marta Travaglioni and Antonella Petrillo *   Citation: De Felice, F.; Travaglioni, M.; Petrillo, A. Innovation Trajectories for a Society 5.0. Data 2021, 6, 115. https://doi.org/10.3390/data6110115 Academic Editor: Maja Meško Received: 30 September 2021 Accepted: 5 November 2021 Published: 10 November 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). Department of Engineering, Parthenope University, 80133 Napoli, Italy; fabio.defelice@uniparthenope.it (F.D.F.); marta.travaglioni@uniparthenope.it (M.T.) * Correspondence: antonella.petrillo@uniparthenope.it Abstract: Big Data, the Internet of Things, and robotic and augmented realities are just some of the technologies that belong to Industry 4.0. These technologies improve working conditions and increase productivity and the quality of industry production. However, they can also improve life and society as a whole. A new perspective is oriented towards social well-being and it is called Society 5.0. Industry 4.0 supports the transition to the new society, but other drivers are also needed. To guide the transition, it is necessary to identify the enabling factors that integrate Industry 4.0. A conceptual framework was developed in which these factors were identified through a literature review and the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) methodology. Furthermore, the way in which they relate was evaluated with the help of the interpretive structural modeling (ISM) methodology. The proposed framework fills a research gap, which has not yet consolidated a strategy that includes all aspects of Society 5.0. As a result, the main driver, in addition to technology, is international politics. Keywords: Society 5.0; Industry 4.0; sustainability; future development; digitalization; analytical hierarchy process; interpretive structural modeling 1. Introduction In early 2019, the Japanese government introduced the concept of Society 5.0. Japan is one of the nations with the greatest amount of technological development applied to social wellness. For this reason, it aspires to create an anthropocentric society that strongly integrates cyberspace and physical space in order to balance economic and technological progress with social problem-solving [1,2]. The Japanese concept of Society 5.0 is aimed at the economy and at the citizens, thus promoting the idea of a Smart Society, where information technology will outline the profile of a new superintelligent company [3]. The digital transformation will once again radically change many aspects of society, affecting private life, public administration, industrial structure, and employment [4,5]. The goal is to create a society in which anyone can create value, anytime and anywhere [6], in compliance with future sustainable strategies developed with the 17 United Nations objectives [7]. Therefore, the objectives of Society 5.0 are also the objectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development [8,9], adopted by all the member states of the United Nations in 2015. Society 5.0 will help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. The two reforms in the vision of a new world share a com- mon direction. From this perspective, Industry 4.0 can be considered as a tool to promote sustainable innovation and is, therefore, a policy-driven discourse on innovation [10–16]. 1.1. The Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0 Relationship Industry 4.0 (I4.0) has recently become a relevant phenomenon and is one of the most important international topics in both industry and academia today [17–19]. I4.0 can be understood as the combination of physical and digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) [13,20,21], cloud computing [22,23], Big Data [21,24], adaptive robotics [13], augmented and virtual realities [25], additive manufacturing [26], and the Internet of Things (IoT) [27,28]. Data 2021, 6, 115. https://doi.org/10.3390/data6110115 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/data