The general theme of this year’s MIC Conference is: “The Towers of Creativity”.

A tribute both to medieval Bologna, once celebrated as the “city of a hundred towers”, and to the very essence of creativity itself. Just as towers rise boldly above the urban landscape, signalling ambition, risk, and visibility, creative ideas stand out from the “flat” average of routine thinking. Creativity is not about remaining safely at the center of a distribution; it is about exploring outliers, reaching for unexpected peaks, and constructing fragile yet courageous structures that emerge above convention.

In Bologna’s historical skyline we find a compelling metaphor for our times: to face uncertainty and complexity, we must dare to build and inhabit new towers of creativity in science, education, technology, art, and everyday life.