Innovating together – Twin City Hub right in the middle

On 9 May 2025, Vienna’s historic Sofiensäle transformed into a vibrant hub of innovation: more than 500 participants from over 40 countries attended EIT Manufacturing Day, which took place as part of the ViennaUP Festival. Under the motto ‘Collaborate to Innovate,’ leading industry representatives, start-ups, investors, researchers and innovation promoters exchanged ideas and made it clear how important collaboration is for change in the manufacturing industry.

Relevance for Twin City Hub

The event highlighted key values that also characterise the Twin City Hub: cross-border cooperation, strong innovation ecosystems and sustainable industrial transformation. The meetings showed how networked structures between start-ups, corporations and public institutions can have a real impact – a clear signal for the 2C FIMH project.

Impressions

Event Highlights

The guiding principle ‘Collaborate to Innovate’ became a call to action for all innovation stakeholders: without cooperation, there can be no progress in green and digital manufacturing.
Eight young energy tech start-ups took centre stage at the BoostUp! East 2025 start-up competition – Hungarian company eChemicles won the €5,000 prize for green production solutions.
James Taylor, global innovation strategist, inspired the audience with his keynote speech ‘SUPERCOLLABORATION – Accelerating Innovation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence’ – an impressive analysis of how human creativity and AI can work together.
In two high-profile panels, representatives from Infineon, UNIDO, FFG, the Vienna Business Agency and other organisations discussed best practices for European industrial cooperation.

Findings & synergies

Over 500 participants, eight pitches, dozens of targeted meetings – a vibrant innovation ecosystem in action.
Start-ups presented solutions for renewable energies, energy storage and decarbonisation – with a focus on agile implementation and cross-border scaling.
Roundtables showed that European industry needs open cooperation – which is precisely the core of our Twin City Hub approach.

What this means for the Twin City Hub

EIT Manufacturing Day has confirmed that innovation thrives on open collaboration. For the Twin City Hub, this means a boost for:

Networked value chains between start-ups and industry
AI-supported, sustainable production models
Ecosystems for SMEs, science and administration – all centrally anchored in the 5-work package model

What happens next

The ideas from Vienna are directly incorporated into our Twin City Hub work:

Work package rounds with strategic transfer of event findings
Startup scouting, prototyping formats and thematic ideation workshops
Continuous cooperation across the SK-AT border – aligned with the innovation agenda of EIT Manufacturing