From connectivity to connectedness - 2 Oct 2020

On October 2, rather than looking at the promises of new digital technologies, and from this inferring how to build organizational and societal readiness for the future, we focused on things that are already happening. Borrowing from science fiction writer William Gibson, we adopted the premise that the future has already, partly, arrived.

This conference was free of cost, was held online and was organised as part of Digital@Idag.

Date: 2 October 2020

Time: 8:45 to 17.00 CEST

Location: Digital conference. Registration required.

The prospects of digital innovation for citizens, organizations, and society have over just a few years become more visible and vivid, and more salient and far-reaching. The disruptive consequences, the challenges and the opportunities for societies, organizations and individuals, have also become more articulated.

In our 2020’s conference, a salient theme was that opportunities and challenges related to digital innovation and AI increasingly require thinking broadly, engaging and collaborating across societal sectors, and developing a vision that prioritizes long-term resilience and prosperity for society, firms and other organizations, and citizens. Attention to social and societal aspects, including sustainability, are inherent in this view. We highlighted the subtle but fundamental importance of attending to the social aspects of technological change through the theme, from connectivity – what technology provides – to connectedness. Specifically, we explored this in three intertwined themes, where the word “smart” denotes the attention to meaningful and responsible change that we want to highlight: Smart regions, Smart global knowledge networks, and Smart organizations.

At the conference, we showed, discussed, and drew insights from path-breaking initiatives that can help build better living conditions (in rural India as well as in high-tech regions); accelerate innovation, learning, and responsiveness on a global scale (with particular focus on global knowledge networks in healthcare), and build augmented organizations that leverage AI by working, and leading, differently.

This conference was organized in collaboration with the Wallenberg Foundations and Digital@Idag, a nation-wide initiative with more than 300 actors and 111 locations and events highlighting digital innovation on 2 October. The conference is also part of the outreach program of the Jacob and Marcus Wallenberg Center for Innovative and Sustainable Business Development, and the Scania Center of Innovation and Operational Excellence, at the SSE House of Innovation. The SSE House of Innovation is co-funded by the Erling Persson Foundation.