Innovation, automatization, and digitalization of production processes entail many positive externalities for companies. These include higher levels of competitiveness and productivity brought about by improving operational processes, facilitating access to new markets, easing product differentiation and optimizing the entire value chain. Smart manufacturing trends capture these changes, highlighting opportunities and challenges for companies. Various factors condition the adoption of new technologies in companies in Latin America and the Caribbean, thus hampering innovation and technological change, but these can be overcome with adequate strategies to provide the necessary environment and incentives to promote innovation. This document provides an analytical framework for the design of such strategies, based on the study of a set of initiatives, both public and private, aimed at promoting smart manufacturing. It is intended to serve as a guide and inspiration to continue fostering technological change and industrialization policies in the region.