The kick-off event on Monday evening took place at IPAI: AI showcases were presented in impressive surroundings and numerous discussions were held with new and familiar contacts. The annual conference followed on Tuesday at the Bildungscampus Heilbronn, hosted by Fraunhofer IAO. The program ranged from strategic classifications to practical reports and in-depth discussions.

In terms of content, the leitmotif "With AI ecosystems to service sovereignty" shaped the contributions. It became clear how much AI is already changing industrial services today - and what framework conditions are needed in networked ecosystems to ensure independence from external providers and reliable value creation. The focus was on questions of data quality, governance, competencies and sustainable cooperation models.

Our most important observations:

• AI has becomea basic requirement - no longer a mere differentiator
• Mass personalization is moving into practical reach and changing service portfolios in the long term
• "Service sovereignty" is becoming even more differentiated and encompasses multiple perspectives
• Ecosystems bring with them new areas of tension, for example between trust and control
• Data is the critical raw material: storage locations and access rights must be consistently checked and controlled

The LFO would like to thank the organizers for the professional organization and all participants for the open exchange. We are incorporating the insights gained into our research and reflecting them back into our collaboration with our partners in practice as part of Smart-DLWD.