UOC hosts international conference focusing on sustainable growth, well-being and competitiveness

The seventh international Research & Innovation Forum (Rii Forum) will take place at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), on 24 and 25 April, on the theme of competitiveness, growth and well-being through technology, innovation and education. This global academic conference, which includes both online and on-site sessions, brings together faculty, researchers and scholars every year to discuss major trends in technology, innovation and education, and the areas where they intersect. The organizers look forward to welcoming some hundred experts to the event being held at the UOC's Barcelona campus (Rambla del Poblenou 154).

The conference's three chairs are Anna Visvizi, from the Warsaw School of Economics, Poland, Orlando Troisi, from the University of Salerno, Italy, and Enric Serradell López, a researcher and member of the UOC's Faculty of Economics and Business. "Innovation is a very broad concept, which takes in both technology's disruptive processes and educational aspects. Indeed, educational innovation is vitally important at the UOC," said Serradell, who is also the coordinator of the Management & eLearning (MeL) research group.

Sustainability, technology and education

The conference is divided into six tracks. The first will address governance of cities, sustainability and resilience. The second will deal with issues of innovation, quality and technology management, and their local, regional and global contexts. The third track looks at education, which this year will prioritize generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), in terms of both content creation and its managerial implications. The fourth track focuses on future thinking, i.e. creating and forecasting future scenarios with methodologies such as design thinking. The fifth will be related to regulatory frameworks and policy-making for competitiveness, growth and well-being. Finally, the sixth, the early career researchers' track, will look at fostering new ideas.

UOC Rector Àngels Fitó will give the opening speech on the first day of the conference. In addition to Enric Serradell, the organizers include María Jesús Martínez Argüelles, UOC Vice Rector for Governance and Academic Policy; Xavier Baraza, Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business; Jordi Sánchez Navarro, Dean of the Faculty of Information and Communication Sciences; Amal Elasri, Raquel Ferreras, Cintia Pla and José Carlos Ramos, members of  the Faculty of Economics and Business and researchers in the MeL group; and Pablo Lara, a member of the Faculty of Information and Communication Sciences and of MeL.

Digital transformation

The keynote speaker at the Rii Forum will be the expert in digital transformation, Johan Magnusson, Professor of Information Systems at the University of Gothenburg and director of the Swedish Center for Digital Innovation (SCDI) Gothenburg.

"We've asked Professor Magnusson to consider digital transformation from a holistic perspective, and explore how governance has an impact on both institutions and nations. This transformation isn't just digital, it's also green," explained Serradell. "His talk will look at how we can understand innovation in terms of the economic evolution towards greater digitization, with increased automation and robotization. It will also consider long-term sustainability, because the digital and ecological transformations are two aspects of the same process of change towards a more efficient and sustainable future."

Another highpoint of the conference will be the round table discussion, in which Magnusson, Serradell and Visvizi will be accompanied by Igor Calzada, researcher and professor at the University of the Basque Country, to talk about competitiveness, growth and well-being in the current context of innovative developments in science and technology at a time of social and political uncertainty and instability.

Meanwhile, the university-business dialogue session will examine and look to foster collaboration between academia and the corporate sector. Under the title Bridging the gap: fostering industry-academia collaboration for impactful innovation, the session will feature international experts and business representatives including Petros Georgiakakis, founder of ITsART; Francesc Font-Cot, co-CEO of Incapto Coffee; Alessandro Manetti, Vice President Europe of LCI Education, and Katarzyna Szopik-Depczyńska, from the University of Messina (Italy). The discussion will be moderated by Lloyd Waller, from the University of the West Indies (Caribbean Community).

The Meet the Editors session will involve Giustina Secundo, co-editor of the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research; Vincenzo Corvello, editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Innovation Management, and Orlando Troisi, guest editor of Transforming Government: People, Process & Policy. Those attending will be able to find out about the complexities and challenges involved in the editorial process at academic journals, and about the roles of editors and reviewers.

The Rii Forum will also include a workshop for PhD students, with David Masip Rodó, Director of the UOC's Doctoral School, and Mara Grimaldi, Research Fellow at the University of Salerno.

"There will be a great deal of interaction involved in everything, because we want the Rii Forum to be a place for exchange. The presentations will be followed by question-and-answer sessions, and there will be interaction and debate between the participants. Numbers are sure to be high thanks to the fact that Barcelona is the venue and that the UOC is playing a major role, with its leading reputation in a range of fields covered by this conference," concluded Serradell.

The Rii Forum contributes the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including 4. Quality Education; 8. Decent Work and Economic Growth; 9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, and 11. Sustainable Cities and Communities.

UOC R&I

The UOC's research and innovation (R&I) is helping overcome pressing challenges faced by global societies in the 21st century by studying interactions between technology and human & social sciences with a specific focus on the network society, e-learning and e-health.

Over 500 researchers and more than 50 research groups work in the UOC's seven faculties, its eLearning Research programme and its two research centres: the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) and the eHealth Center (eHC).

The university also develops online learning innovations at its eLearning Innovation Center (eLinC), as well as UOC community entrepreneurship and knowledge transfer via the Hubbik platform.

Open knowledge and the goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development serve as strategic pillars for the UOC's teaching, research and innovation. More information: research.uoc.edu.