Breakout session 4: Cross-border collaboration – Innovation in practice
October 28th, 2026 — 15:30 - 16:30
Description
Taking deep-tech into international markets requires more than connections between organisations. It also requires trust infrastructure, strategic alignment, commercial clarity and mechanisms that can help technologies move through the gap between development and adoption. Contributions in this session trace how cross-border platforms evolve from networking hubs into execution infrastructure.
The Focus talk by Le Village by CA Provence Côte d’Azur in France will open the session with a practical challenge to the standard fundraising narrative, putting the founder’s commercial reality at the centre and considering the choice between organic growth and exit. The other contributions explore cross-border collaboration from an ecosystem perspective. TUSNEX in China presents its H2H orchestration platform for validating industrial technologies across the “valley of death” internationally. Teknopark Istanbul in Türkiye looks at technological sovereignty through domestic capacity-building in defence and aerospace, supported by sector-specific partnerships. Karachi Technopolis in Pakistan draws on comparative evidence from Cambridge, Shenzhen and Nairobi to examine how inclusive governance can expand social impact.
Focus talk: Beyond the "Startup Nation" myth: a human centric model for sustainable and meaningful innovation ecosystems
Breakout session 4: Cross-border collaboration – Innovation in practice
Moderator
Speakers
