Industry Cooperation and Partnerships

The summit connects the academic programme with real transformation challenges faced by companies, public institutions, cities, startups, and NGOs. It includes an industry keynote, case presentations, a boutique Smart Product and Solution Expo, networking sessions, panel discussions, and a Smart Student Hackathon solving real partner challenges.

This links the applied business education and research agenda with industry needs in AI adoption, smart mobility, sustainability, digital maturity, organisational resilience, smart education, and responsible innovation. It also creates opportunities for applied research, student projects, company case studies, executive education, and future doctoral research in Business Transformation.

Types of cooperation

Examples from previous editions

Previous editions have already combined academic exchange with industry-facing formats. The 2026 EAU Mobility IoT conference in Dubai, eventually held online, included international keynotes, accepted papers from more than 15 countries, a workshop on IoT in health research, a social programme, and poster sessions. The 2025 SmartZero City forum in Taiwan was explicitly designed as a platform connecting academia, industry, and government around low-carbon cities and sustainable innovation, with experts from sustainability and AI. Its partner and speaker ecosystem included companies and institutions such as Far Eastern New Century, Far Eastern Electronic Group, NEWTON University, the University of Edinburgh, and Queensland University of Technology.

Building on these examples, the 2027 summit will expand the industry dimension through a more explicit focus on smart products, business transformation cases, applied research partnerships, and student-led solutions to real organisational and societal problems.