The date of 19 September marked the celebration of Irun Open Innovation 2017, a meeting focusing on open innovation promoted by the Irun City Council and organised by Conexiones improbables.

IOI 2017 was officially opened by José Antonio Santano, mayor of Irun, and Txema Villate, deputy to the presidency of Innobasque.

The conference day commenced with Cecilia Tham, founder of Makers of Barcelona and a Fellow at Singularity University, presenting a paper entitled “The era of metamorphosis” and it it concluded in the afternoon with a paper by Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí, founder and director of ideograma, communication advisor and political consultant, entitled “Innovation: thinking outside the box”.

There were three panels in total throughout the day. The first, entitled “External inputs for Industry 4.0”, was chaired by Eva Fernández, managing director of Bidasoa activa, and included Óscar García, head of innovation development at Obe Hettich, with the paper “Technology at the service of people”; María Teresa Linaza, director of promotion and institutional development at Vicomtech IK4, spoke about “Digital transformation of the consumer good industries”; Diego Badiola, managing director of Algon, with “Industry 4.0 in a world of SMEs”, and David Sánchez, director of knowledge transfer at Mondragón University, with a paper on “Ecosystems and platform for Industry 4.0”.

The second panel, “Technologies that change daily life”, began with Paola Tognazzi, founder of Wearable Dynamics, with a talk entitled “Future skins: reactive objects printed in 3D”. Manuel Montejo, technology director at Tecnalia Salud, spoke about “Neuroengineering as a bridge between mind and body” and Maider Camarero, administrator of Luma Suite SL, discussed “With music everywhere”. This panel was chaired by Roberto Gómez de la Iglesia, director of c2+i / Conexiones improbables.

The third panel, “When nature inspires innovation”, included Carlos Sáez Comet, application development manager at Berry Global Biomimicry Iberia, Diego Soroa, director of Cuantics Creatives Lab, and Aritz Lakuona, development director and founding partner of Ekonek. Their papers were respectively entitled “Training and innovation through biomimetics”, “Naturally inspired organisations” and “Efficient and sustainable production of certain biomaterials”. The chair in this final panel was Gotzon Bernaola, director of social innovation at Innobasque.