The ISPIM Innovation Conference in Porto

The ISPIM conference (International Society for Professional Innovation Management) was held in June in Porto. ISPIM is a network of researchers, industrialists, consultants and public bodies who share an interest in innovation management. The ISPIM conference attracted around 450 innovation professionals from around 45 countries to Porto.

Starting the conference

FACTS4WORKERS was attended at the ISPIM conference by Associate Professor Lea Hannola from Lappeenranta University of Technology, giving a presentation of the research paper “Sociotechnical Challenges in Knowledge-Intensive Production Environments” (written by L. Hannola, P. Heinrich, A. Richter and A. Stocker). FACTS4WORKERS had a perfect position to present and discuss already on the first day of the conference for full audience.

One of the conference focus themes this year was “Innovating in traditional sectors”. The FACTS4WORKERS project and the sociotechnical challenges in production were presented in the session under this theme. The research paper focuses especially on exploring the potential of recent digital technologies for empowering human workers, and it proposes which sociotechnical challenges frame the implementation of novel digital technologies in knowledge-intensive production environments. Together with the FACTS4WORKERS presentation, participants of the session were able to hear about the impact of the IoT on product development and management, the model of “Loose Coupled” networks and the socio-political antecedents of technical innovation. The session ended with fruitful discussion about the role of IoT and technical innovations in product development. The FACTS4WORKERS presentation raised interest among the audience, and e.g. it was suggested that the framework of sociotechnical challenges could be also utilized in other fields like service sectors.

FACTS4WORKERS presentation