The fourth industrial revolution has been characterized as a widely used concept in the business field, which seeks to improve and facilitate different procedures. Currently there is an increasingly demanding market, for this reason it is important to create different methods that promote growth, transformation and digitization. Promoting innovation in a country is important, because it allows increasing wealth, technological development and growth, thus achieving a positive impact.

Technologies such as big data, blockchain, Internet of things, Virtual reality and Artificial intelligence are changing the way in which people work and, obviously, how they live in South America.

These technologies, which all belong to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, have a special impact on the public sector, offering new opportunities to improve productivity while reducing costs, but not only that. As always, new developments bring new risks, which are important in South America.

For example, the increase in digital differences and the design of algorithms that violate the social welfare. Therefore, the main challenge for South America is to cope the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0 in a context marked by social inequality.

Due to the context described above, the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean are combining their best efforts to be organized in order to face the Fourth Industrial Revolution.


That is, a large part of its efforts are dedicated to planning and evaluating the risks derived from this new situation. Obviously, not all change is negative. Thus, the technologies that the Fourth Industrial Revolution brings with it will help reduce costs from social services, without minimizing their quality. In this way, social services can also be adapted, improving transparency and increasing the participation of citizens. Consequently, government administrations will have to adapt to all this new technological ecosystem, full of innovations that are taking steps towards the digital economy.

Therefore, the development of technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution must be an effort made by all South American governments, in order not to be left behind.
South American (view) governments have the obligation to recognize that digital life is real life. That is why it is of the highest priority to carry out the transition from analog to digital age, coupled with efforts to strengthen digital skills and capacities at different government levels. This can be summed up in the changes that the business world is undergoing.

On one hand, robotics, artificial intelligence, automation ...
On the other, the consequences of the Fourth Industrial
Revolution in the business world; specifically, in the organizational aspect, that is, most of the tasks performed by workers in South America are highly automated, which will have a considerable impact on the activities carried out by workers. In this sense, governments are fully aware and conscious, so they won´t want to lose the opportunity to join this industrial revolution.

The application of new technologies is growing widely in the region. A study by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Latin American Internet Association states that in the region "cross-border online sales represent 38% of total sales and 41% of online sales". In Colombia, for example, 81% of exporters use online platforms to expand their businesses.

In Argentina, for example, close to 5,000 companies in the software sector employ over 90,000 people and in 2015 they obtained US $ 1,004 million in income from sales abroad, according to its Chamber of Software and Informatics Services (CESSI). 50% of sales go to the United States, followed by Uruguay (9.2%), Mexico (9%) and Brazil (5.2%).

Digital region

Many players in the sector are betting on growth in South America. According to the IDC consultancy, the sector will spend over US $ 300 billion on information technology and telecommunications this year.