Events

Overview

This year InterAct will join over 250 exhibitors and more than 600 thought leaders and changemakers, speaking across 14 forums, at Innovation Zero 2024.

This is the UK’s largest sustainability conference, held at the London Olympia for the second time on 30 April – 1 May 2024, alongside its new co-located event, Infrastructure Zero. 

This is a fantastic event for those interested in the intersection of business, new technology and net-zero ambitions.

InterAct will have a stand located on the floorplan at section ‘G90’ by the main stage. InterAct Co-director, Professor Jillian MacBryde will also be delivering a talk on all things InterAct, entitled: ‘From Human Insight to Human Action – InterAct and the Future of Manufacturing’. You can hear her talk from 17:15 – 17:30, Tuesday 30th April at the Industry Forum stage.

Why attend?

This is a good opportunity to meet industry representatives from the Energy, Transport & Mobility, Industrial, Finance, Advanced Tech, Food & Agriculture, Oceans & Water, Communication, Aviation & Shipping, Carbon Markets, Minerals & Materials sectors.

Attendees will also be able to hear from senior policymakers across the world as they announce key strategic partnerships, global investment opportunities and new Paris Agreement-aligned initiatives.

The following themes run throughout all content forums:

• Scaling clean technology
• Financing the transformation
• Low carbon leadership
• Investing in green infrastructure
• Innovative enabling policy
• Circularity
• Supply chains

Overview

This is the first round of stakeholder workshops being held by the Open Product Initiative.

They are looking to speak with anyone involved in the WEEE and batteries value chain.

They want to understand all of the steps in the value chain, what data is collected at each one and what is passed onto the next. They aim to find out where this process is challenging and what the sensitivities are around it. In addition, they would like to discuss Extended Producer Responsibility including recent developments around digital product passports (DPP) and understand any concerns around these.

The Open Product Initiative is a collaborative project between Loughborough University, Open Data Manchester and Dsposal, with support from Tech UK and Buyerdock.

The aim is to explore the development of an open standard for batteries and EEE/WEEE data building on the work already conducted to develop the Open 3P standard for packaging data.

Workshops have a limited number of participants, but there will four workshops in total.

Overview 

The Innovation and Research Caucus will welcome stakeholders and experts to their latest networking session at The Studio, Birmingham. This event aims to give participants the opportunity to:

• Understand the directions and evidence needs for research and innovation support as a wider community.    
• Share gathered insights to help inform projects and gaps in the research and innovation system.
• Update the community – where is the IRC and where’s it going.

The event will be broken up into different sessions. These will include:   

• An intro session from UKRI.
• A panel discussion with UKRI Senior Colleagues to discuss the importance of evidence for decision makers.
• Breakout sessions delving deeper into specific themes.
• A session on ‘actionable insights’, including definitions and examples

Overview

In spite of the UK enjoying a vibrant and innovative manufacturing sector, the industry struggles with an outdated, negative public image. Recent research from InterAct demonstrates that people still associate the sector with old-fashioned, low-paid, inflexible, and repetitive work. There is also a perception that manufacturing businesses lack proper interest in ensuring employee wellbeing and diversity. The result is an industry struggling to attract young talent.

This is certainly a branding problem for the sector, but the usual campaigns and initiatives haven’t moved the needle. A ‘consumer-style’ approach to branding can only lead to cosmetic improvements, and any change it brings will also only be skin deep.

That’s why the manufacturing-research focused InterAct Network have joined forces expert creative change consultants GW+Co to offer this online workshop for manufacturing leaders. It will explore the underlying issues for manufacturing, address the myths of modern branding and introduce ways for you to enact meaningful change within your business.

How will this event benefit your business?

• You will learn how three manufacturing businesses have changed perception by aligning their people with brand, culture, and strategy.
• You will be introduced to the tools and approaches that deliver successful brands by tapping into the existing skills and knowledge within a business.
• Included is training in a technique developed by GW+Co that helps you to identify the pitfalls specific to your business, and documents outcomes in a way that ensures your project is a success and that your team is right there with you.

For the last 10 years, GW+Co’s transformative process has helped engineering and technology companies around the world increase business performance whilst attracting and retaining talent. Notable clients include ams Osram, ASSA ABLOY, Accsys Technologies, Control Techniques, Lenzing, Thorn and Zumtobel Group.

Overview

We hear a lot about the impact of Industry 4.0 in manufacturing, but it can be a complex and thorny issue to definitively explain. The term has become synonymous with smart manufacturing and the introduction of new digital technologies within the sector. Technologists talk about the Internet of Things (IoT), AI and machine learning, robotics or the power of cloud computing, but what does it all mean?

InterAct are welcoming Dr. Olivér Kovács of the Ludovika University of Public Services, Budapest to share his insights on the 4th Industrial Revolution, how technological change can be accomplished and what key barriers to innovation remain.

Olivér Kovács is a Hungarian economist whose research embraces two fields:

1. Sustainable development through the lens of complexity science (including structural change, techno-economic paradigm shifts, Industry 4.0, state fiscal sustainability and the theoretical and empirical issues of fiscal policy and fiscal consolidations)
2. Innovation and innovation policy

He has been a member of public body of Hungarian Academy of Sciences since 2015 (Economics and Law Section of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Committee on World Economics and Development Studies), a member of the EuroMoney Expert Panel since 2010, and a member of the Darwin Club for Social Sciences which is equipped with the idea of applying evolutionary and complexity approaches to socio-economic phenomena.

Olivér has published several books including:

• Stability and Dynamism – Fundamentals of Innovative Fiscal Policy
• Complexity Economics: Economic Governance, Science and Policy
• Reversing the Great Suppression – Unleashing the Catalytic Public Sector for Innovation Dynamism