From the Dark Side of Industry 4.0 to Society 5.0: Looking “Beyond the Box” to Developing Human-Centric Innovation Ecosystems

Both the pandemic and the global climate changes accelerate the need for urgent solutions to guarantee humanity’s sustainable and prosperous future. Remarkably, at the 10-year mark of introducing Industry 4.0, the adverse effects arising from adopting absolute technocentric perspectives are now evident. Scholars and practitioners claim new plans for a future where technology empowers people and innovationworks for business and society. Humans and machines are expected to reconcile and work in symbiosis, supporting the emergence of Super Smart Societies (S5.0), the last ones based on human-centricity, sustainability, and resilience. Despite the mentioned, guidelines on how technocentric and human-centric innovations should combine to trigger S5.0 are still missing. Depending on the above, this article aims to design a comprehensive framework based on the Quintuple Helix Model, supporting the design and the implementation of S5.0. In doing so, several prescriptions on howGovernment, University, Industry, Civil Society, and Environment may address the goals of S5.0 are provided.