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“Innovation ecosystems in rural areas”

The major megatrends of our time - such as digitalization, decarbonization and demographic change - are confronting rural regions in Germany with immense transformation challenges. The future viability of rural-industrialized regions is of great importance for the economic, social and ecological prosperity and political stability of liberal democracies. This year's Socio-Informatics Conference, held from 6 to 8 October 2024 at the Fraunhofer Forum in Berlin, was dedicated to precisely these challenges.

The Socio-Informatics Conference 2024 was organized by the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT) together with the University of Siegen, the International Institute for Socio-Informatics (IISI) and the Department of Human-Computer Interaction of the German Informatics Society. High-ranking speakers from science, business and politics discussed current challenges and innovative solutions for future-oriented transformation processes that explicitly take into account the special features of rural-industrialized regions.

On 7 October, Prof. Dr. Muhamed Kudic (Technische Hochschule Ostwestfalen Lippe, THOWL) organized a session on “Innovation ecosystems in rural areas”, during which four contributions were presented. The RWI - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research and the ZSW - Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg contributed interesting findings on cluster policy and regional transformation dynamics. In addition, recent insights on the emergence of innovation networks and the effects of the digital transformation on work were presented and discussed by researchers from the University of Siegen and the Hans-Böckler-Foundation's Institute of Economic and Social Sciences (WSI). 

On October 8, keynote speakers from business and politics were guests at the conference. As part of the parliamentary afternoon, Michael Kellner (State Secretary, Federal Ministry of Economic Affais and Climate Action, BMWK) spoke about future models for rural industrialized regions and Luiza Licina Bode (Member of the German Bundestag) addressed the importance of industrial structures in rural areas that are shaped by SMEs. The parliamentary evening concluded with a panel discussion in which Arndt G. Kirchhoff (Vice President of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations, BDA), Laura Kraft (Member of the German Bundestag), Stephan Seiter (Member of the German Bundestag), Volker Wulf (Vice-Rector for Science, Technology and Society, University of Siegen) and Friederike Welter (Member of the Expert Commission on Research and Innovation, EFI Commission) passionately discussed the main theme of the conference.