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Deadline for submission of abstracts: 9 January 2026

The conference encourages the submission of cutting-edge research that engages with the challenges and opportunities emerging at the intersection of digital change, sustainability, and geopolitical shifts.

Contributions may include conceptual, empirical, and policy-oriented work that addresses the governance of innovation, the future of global value chains, new business models, mission-driven innovation, and anticipatory approaches to technological change.

We invite bold thinking on how innovation and technology management can remain not only relevant, but transformative, in a world in flux.

Conference topics

Abstracts are invited on the following topics and should be submitted using the online abstract submission system.

1. AI in Innovation: Augmentation, Automation, and Ethics

Engaging with how artificial intelligence is changing R&D, design, forecasting, and innovation decision-making—and raising new ethical and governance issues.

2. The Platformization of Industry: Ecosystem Strategy and Value Reconfiguration

Understanding how digital platforms orchestrate ecosystems, reshape industries, and create new power structures in the global economy.

3. Open Innovation in the Post-Platform Era

Investigating the evolving logic of open innovation in complex multi-actor settings, including platform ecosystems, regional clusters, and public-private partnerships.

4. User-Driven and Community Innovation in Digitally Mediated Contexts

Exploring grassroots innovation, citizen science, maker movements, and online communities as sources of technological and social innovation.

5. Mission-Oriented Innovation and Societal Challenges

Analyzing how innovation systems are being reoriented toward grand challenges—climate, health, mobility—through public missions, partnerships, and policy instruments.

6. Strategic Foresight and Technological Forecasting in Innovation Management

Deep-diving into methods and applications of foresight, Delphi studies, roadmapping, and horizon scanning across sectors.

7. Dynamic Capabilities and Innovation Capture in Global Firms

Understanding how multinationals manage R&D and innovation investment amid turbulence, including geopolitical stress.

8. Sustainable Futures: Innovation for Environmental and Social Resilience

Examining the interplay between technological innovation, environmental transitions, and inclusive development at the firm, ecosystem, and policy levels.

9. Reinventing Industrial Policy for the Digital Age

Critically evaluating how governments and supra-national bodies shape innovation trajectories through strategic investments, regulation, and ecosystem building.

10. Global South Innovation Pathways and Alternative Models of Development

Investigating innovation trajectories and ecosystem models emerging from the Global South, especially amid shifting global power dynamics.

11. Quantitative Technology Forecasting and Scouting Mechanics

How firms deploy data driven scouting, text mining and extrapolation models to detect emerging industrial technologies and guide R&D investment strategies.

12. Cyber physical Systems & Smart Manufacturing Management

Study of managing IoT enabled manufacturing systems, digital twins, and smart factory operations to optimize technical performance and production agility.

13. Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty in Engineering Projects

Application of robust scenario planning and adaptive frameworks (DMDU) to manage engineering and technology investments amid highly uncertain futures.

14. Supply Chain Digital Technologies and Innovation Capability

Exploration of how digital tools (e.g. blockchain, analytics, automation) enhance innovation capability within supply chain engineering and operations

Guidelines for authors

You can submit as many abstracts to the conference for review as you would like. If, after the review by the committee, you have more than one paper accepted for the conference, you will need to register to attend and pay an additional paper fee for each additional paper (i.e., for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th papers – not the 1st). Please note this is for papers that you are the presenting author of, not papers that you are co-author of.

Successfully submitted abstracts will be acknowledged with an electronic receipt including an abstract reference number, which should be quoted in all correspondence. Allow at least 2 hours for your receipt to be returned to you.

Once the paper is accepted, at least one of the authors must register for the conference and present the paper at the conference.

Abstracts of all accepted contributions will be included within the online abstract system which will be distributed to all registered conference participants.

For revisions or queries regarding papers already submitted

If you do not receive acknowledgement for your abstract submission or you wish to make any essential revisions to an abstract already submitted, please DO NOT RESUBMIT your abstract, as this may lead to duplication. Please contact us with details of any revisions or queries. Please quote your reference number if you have one.

Please do not email credit card information under any circumstances.