The conference focused on the main topic „Economics, Governance and Management of AI, Robots and Digital Transformations“ and consisted of an international and interdisciplinary audience. It was organized by the Business School/Science Policy Research Unit of the University of Sussex.

Jessica Birkholz presented her empirical results in the area “Platform economics” entitled „The role of social networks for innovative business idea generation. Geographical distribution of social contracts, structural embeddedness and digitalisation“. Her research interests are entrepreneurship, regional economics as well as knowledge creation and diffusion.

Matheus E. Leusin presented about the worldwide distribution of artificial intelligence. The title of his presentation was „The race for technological leadership in artificial intelligence“. Matheus Leusin won the Best Paper Award of the conference for junior scholars endowed with 1000 Euro.

Another presentation was held by Mariia Shkolnykova, who presented in the session “Societal Challenges” her paper entitled „Technological transformation at work: Analyzing the transition from biotech to bio economy using patent citation and network analysis“. Based on her paper, which is co-authored by Muhamed Kudic, Mariia Shkolnykova investigates the technological transformation of biotechnology to a bioeconomy based on patent data.

The working group “Innovation and Structural Change” (Prof. Dr. Jutta Günther) where the three scholars belong to is part of the ierp – Institute for Economic and Policy Research at the Faculty of Business Studies and Economics.