The 5th International Scientific and Business Conference "Future Engineering 2019.Technical and Organizational Innovations for Industry" was held on May 29-30, 2019 at the Lamberton Hotel in Ołtarzew near Warsaw. The conference was organized by the Institute for Sustainable Technologies of the Łukasiewicz Research Network and the Marshal's Office of the Mazowieckie Voivodeship. The honorary patronage over the event was taken by the Marshal of the Mazowieckie Voivodeship and the National Center for Research and Development. The Partners of the Conference were Polish and international organizations, including the Business Center Club, the Chamber of Commerce of the Radom Region, Smart Specialization Platform S3, Foresight European Network, Teach the Future Foundation and ReConfirm.
This year's edition of the Conference had not only a highly international dimension, but also interdisciplinary and interactive. During two days, prospects for the future in the context of the development of technological, social and environmental innovations were exchanged by guests from fourteen countries from Europe, the USA and Australia. Representatives of science, business, non-governmental and public organizations also had the opportunity to share their perspectives and experiences during moderated workshops and discussion panels. The Conference was attended by over 150 participants representing over 40 companies, both from the SME sector and large international corporations, over 40 scientific and research institutions and prestigious technical universities as well as representatives of local and regional authorities.
The thematic sessions on the first day of the Conference concerned the issues of innovative technologies and technical systems, technical security and environmental technologies as well as innovation management and technology transfer. The plenary session included keynote speeches dedicated to the implementation of investment projects and regional models of science and business cooperation support in the area of creating innovation and building links between various stakeholder groups in this area, with particular emphasis on good practices, investment projects and innovation policies implemented in Mazovia Region. The second plenary session of the first day was devoted to the issues of global trends and new technologies in the context of sustainable development and the challenges facing modern organizations. The agenda of the first day was closed by two parallel sessions: interdisciplinary discussion on barriers and challenges in the area of cooperation between research and business institutions; and interactive workshops "Creating innovation in 2050".
The second day of the Conference began with a plenary session focused on strategic thinking, organizational capacity building and systematic analyses of the future. The plenary session included various perspectives of looking at the development of organizational strategy and individual competences as well as creating effective partnerships for the development of innovation. It included the role of foresight in supporting strategic thinking in organizations and communities as well as the methodology of development and teaching forward-looking thinking as an important competence in a dynamically changing world. Also the assumptions of the European strategic partnerships for research and innovation were presented. Furthermore, the second day of the Conference included moderated workshop sessions and panel sessions devoted to specialist robotics applications, including in the areas of space technologies, medicine and defence, as well as a session dedicated to corporate and technological foresight. The workshop sessions included: the subject of succession models in enterprises; managing "Intelligent factories of the future" in the context of Industry 4.0 and educational methods to develop individual competences in the field of futures thinking. In conjunction with the conference, the meetings of the representatives of two European network organizations took place; namely: the Thematic Partnership SMEs Integration to Industry 4.0 and the Foresight Europe Network.
We would like to thank all participants for interesting presentations and inspiring discussions. They are an invaluable source of topics and reflections for further meetings planned for the future, gathering together representatives of science, business and government.