Industry 5.0 judges industry by wellbeing, sustainability and resilience, not efficiency alone. That is a leadership question before it is a technology one, and after four Leadership Futures reports with Henley Business School, here is what it asks of leaders.
Matt Parry · First published 10 September 2023 · Updated September 2026
Industry 5.0, as the European Commission defines it, is an industrial model that goes beyond efficiency and productivity as its only goals. The Commission’s 2021 policy brief says it “complements the existing Industry 4.0 paradigm” by making industry sustainable, human-centric and resilient: capturing the value of new technologies “while respecting planetary boundaries, and placing the wellbeing of the industry worker at the centre of the production process”. In plain terms, the fourth revolution asked what technology could do. The fifth asks who it serves.
Every industrial revolution has a story, and it is never really about the machines. When this essay was first written in 2023, Industry 5.0 was mostly a manufacturing conversation. Since then we have spent nine months inside it with Henley Business School’s academics, producing four Leadership Futures reports on leading in the era. This is the rewrite that work asked for.
What came before
The earlier version of this essay recapped four revolutions at length. A table does the job, and makes the point more clearly: each earlier revolution was defined by its power source or its technology. The fifth is the first to be defined by its purpose.
Revolution · When (approximately) · Defining shift · The question it answered
First: 1760s–1840s · Mechanisation, steam power, the factory system · Can machines do the work?
Second: 1870s–1910s · Electricity, steel, mass production, telegraph and telephone · Can we do it at scale?
Third: 1960s onwards · Digital technology, computers, automation, the internet · Can it run itself?
Fourth: Early 21st century · Cyber-physical systems, AI, robotics, the Internet of Things · Can it connect and learn?
Fifth: Defined by the European Commission in 2021 · Human-centric, sustainable, resilient industry · Who is it for?
Industry 4.0 vs Industry 5.0
It is tempting to read Industry 5.0 as a rejection of Industry 4.0. It is not. The Commission is explicit that the fifth complements the fourth: the sensors, the data, the connected factory all stay. What changes is the brief they are working to.
Industry 4.0 · Industry 5.0
Primary goal: Efficiency, productivity, connectivity · Wellbeing, sustainability and resilience alongside productivity
Role of technology: Automate and connect · Augment and collaborate
Role of people: Operate and supervise the system · At the centre of the production process
Value created for: Shareholders · Stakeholders, the Commission’s phrase is “from shareholder to stakeholder value”
Planetary limits: An externality to be managed · A design constraint from the start
Leadership question: How fast can we adopt this? · How wisely can we use it?
The last row is the one that matters. The Commission’s current framing describes an industry that “is not only a generator of growth, but also a key contributor to societal progress and environmental responsibility”. Nobody automates their way to that. Someone has to decide it.
Industry 4.0 asked what technology could do. Industry 5.0 asks what it is for, and no dashboard answers that on a leader’s behalf.
What Industry 5.0 asks of leaders
Between October 2024 and July 2025, Henley Business School published four Leadership Futures reports on the era, produced with The Future Collective and each fronted by a Henley academic: Advancing into Industry 5.0, Building a People-First Future, Harnessing Technology for Human Progress and Purpose in Practice. Read together, they describe five shifts in what leadership is for. The wording of the shifts below is ours; the research behind them is Henley’s.
From adopting technology to deciding what it is for.Harnessing Technology for Human Progress is structured around harmonising human–AI interaction, preparing the workforce for disruption, ethical governance and change management, not around procurement. Professor Keiichi Nakata, Director of AI and Automation at Henley’s World of Work Institute, puts the leadership test plainly: “The leaders of tomorrow will be defined not by how quickly they adopt AI, but by how wisely they use it to foster innovation, equity, and shared prosperity for all.” (Henley, 2025)
From managing a workforce to leading across generations.Advancing into Industry 5.0 gives a whole section to generational flux, and names engaging Gen Z talent as one of the three things leaders now need to do, alongside human–machine collaboration and social responsibility (Henley, 2024). A values-driven workforce does not follow a leader who treats purpose as a slide.
From people as a cost to people as the asset.Building a People-First Future argues that leaders “must invest in their people, embrace empathy and flexibility, and look beyond profit as a measure of success”, and is built around being inclusive by design. Dr Melissa Carr, the institute’s Director of EDI, has the line to keep: “it’s people, not just physical assets, that fuel lasting success” (Henley, 2025).
From purpose as a statement to purpose in practice.Purpose in Practice starts from the gap between sustainability ambition and the pace of change, and asks why leaders pit purpose against profit and what blocks genuine action. Professor David Pendleton frames sustainability as “a defining factor in the global race for innovation and leadership” (Henley, 2025). Sustainability becomes strategy, not reporting.
From measuring output to measuring what matters. The final section of the people-first report carries exactly that heading. If the era moves value from shareholder to stakeholder, the scorecard has to move with it, or the first four shifts never survive a budget round.
Set the five against the Commission’s three pillars and the pattern is clear. The first three are what human-centric means in a leadership team. The fourth is sustainability. The fifth is where resilience is decided, because what an organisation measures is what it protects when things go wrong. Our later reports with Henley, Redefining Leadership in the Age of AI and The Human Dimension, make the same argument from the other direction: in continuous change, a leader’s effectiveness depends on how they think, not only on what they know (Henley, Leadership Futures).
What it means for design and brands
For design, the move towards Industry 5.0 is a journey back to fundamentals. Brands are more than a name or a logo; they work on emotion and on the subconscious, and the discipline is to blend strategic thinking with creative ingenuity so that what a company says it stands for is what people actually experience. We have written about that in The true power of a brand lives in its identity.
The fifth era raises the stakes. A human-centric strategy expressed through an impersonal brand, a hostile store or a workplace designed around the machine is not human-centric; it is a press release. Design is where the intention becomes real, in the product, the space, the service and the story. That is why we treat futures thinking, strategy and design as one system: futures thinking creates perspective, strategy gives it direction, design gives it form.
What it means for manufacturers
For manufacturing, the practical reading is that the connected factory is the floor, not the ceiling. Industry 4.0 investments in sensors, data and automation remain the foundation; the fifth era changes what they are pointed at.
Three things follow. Human–machine collaboration becomes a design goal rather than a by-product: the question of a new line or system is how it augments the people on it, not how many it removes. Worker wellbeing becomes a production metric, because the Commission has put it at the centre of the production process by definition. And planetary boundaries become a constraint on the process itself, which turns circularity and resilience from sustainability projects into operations decisions.
None of this is softer than Industry 4.0. It is harder, because it asks for judgement where the previous era asked for adoption.
How should leaders prepare?
Not by forecasting. The pace of this era is why we argue that foresight is no longer enough and that organisations need to foreshape: to prototype the future they want rather than predict the one they fear. Three moves make a start.
Take the next technology decision on the table and ask the fifth-era question before the fourth-era one: what is this for, and who does it serve? Then have the generational conversation properly, in the room, with the people whose values will decide whether the strategy is believed. Then choose one measure beyond profit that the leadership team will report on as seriously as the numbers.
The line from the 2023 version of this essay still holds. The way to stay ahead is to get started. This is where our Lead work with leadership teams begins: a futures briefing, a report or a keynote that turns the era into decisions.
What is Industry 5.0?
As the European Commission defines it, Industry 5.0 is a vision of industry that goes beyond efficiency and productivity as its only goals and is human-centric, sustainable and resilient. Set out in a 2021 policy brief, it complements Industry 4.0 rather than replacing it, moves the focus from shareholder to stakeholder value, and places the wellbeing of the worker at the centre of the production process.
What is the difference between Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0?
Industry 4.0 is about connecting and automating production with cyber-physical systems, data, AI and the Internet of Things, with efficiency and productivity as the goal. Industry 5.0 keeps that technology but changes the brief: technology augments people rather than replacing them, planetary limits become a design constraint, and value is judged for stakeholders, not shareholders alone. For leaders, the question moves from how fast to adopt to how wisely to use.
What skills do leaders need for Industry 5.0?
Reading across Henley Business School’s four Leadership Futures reports on the era, the capabilities are: deciding what technology is for and governing it ethically; leading across generations, including a values-driven Gen Z workforce; investing in people with empathy, flexibility and inclusion by design; putting purpose and sustainability into practice as strategy; and measuring what matters beyond profit. Henley’s launch announcement adds adaptability, emotional intelligence and fostering innovation.
Postscript, September 2026. This essay was first published in September 2023 and rewritten after The Future Collective produced the four Leadership Futures reports on Industry 5.0 with Henley Business School. Read the case study, Shaping Leadership for Industry 5.0, or download Advancing into Industry 5.0 (PDF) and the companion reports from Henley’s Leadership Futures hub.
Matt Parry is co-founder of The Future Collective.