Twenty-two Italian and Slovene companies, three industrial consortia and two prestigious research institutions (the International Centre for Theoretical Physics of Trieste and the Josef Stefan Institute of Ljubljana), as well as the regional development agencies partners of the iCON project partners, participated yesterday , November 25, 2013 , in Nova Gorica at the conference on ” Digital Business Ecosystems”, organized by INFORMEST in collaboration with the regional Development Agency of Northern Primorska .

In the morning session there were talks about “new technologies for the company ‘s future” – from Wireless Sensor Networks to Cloud Computing , from the Internet of Objects to Enterprise 2.0 – while in the afternoon was presented the new digital platform cross-border platform for business. The companies were also involved directly in a test session of the functionality of the platform, including the ability to initiate an on-line negotiation between multiple partners.Why there was talk of wireless sensors ? Because the miniaturization of these devices (which also includes the portion of the hardware dedicated to provide energy and one dedicated to the transmission of data) , and their cost , lower and lower, make it now possible to create intelligent sensor networks, distributed in different places (buildings , airplanes , street lights, guardrail , sports equipment, … ) , that gather and transmit data without stopping to central processing units .It is therefore a cross-technology , which will invest all industries with the force of a tsunami and will make possible radical innovations in all fields. It will be the technological substrate on which it will develop the Internet of the future , that is the “Internet of Things”, a global network of interconnected objects : computers, cell phones , alarm systems , weather stations , washing machines, … It is estimated that in 2020 more than 50 billions of physical objects will be connected to the network. The WSN is one of the most promising land of innovation for all companies .Collect, store, analyze, process these massive data streams generated by networks implies the need for more powerful computers , efficient and fast … in short, high-performance computers capable of performing real-time processing of large masses of data, and to run software analysis and research more and more sophisticated . Here comes into play the ‘ High Performance Computing ( HPC) – one of those industries on which the iCON project put around a table Italian and Slovenian companies to create the first nucleus of a dedicated cross-border cluster, which already has a name , a website, a development strategy , and soon you will be in the form of a European Economic Interest Group .Speaking of WSN , HPC , IoT means today to talk about innovation, that is the central theme of one of the macro – actions of the iCON project. The innovation of enterprises today is measured globally, because the competition is global . To innovate is not enough just to create a new product, change marketing strategies , optimize logistics … it is fundamental to cooperate , circulate ideas, share expertise , reach critical mass , in other words, to network, because the search process is always more interdisciplinary , complex and costly. Not for nothing, in the heart of the project iCON lies the establishment of cross-border networks in some key areas for our regional economy , such as boating , green economy , transport, and ICT of course .So it is essential to cooperate and share. For this reason, the iCON project , thanks to the support of qualified professionals, sought to implement a prototype of Digital Business Ecosystem (DBE ) cross- platform software that is accessible via the Internet that helps companies to know each other, to share skills and expertise , to identify business opportunities, to work together, … a set of tools , maybe a little difficult to approach because they are far from the logic we are used to , but definitely useful to help companies take the road of deep innovation, the one that impacts on their business models.