Of the projects submitted, 88% incorporated artificial intelligence or machine learning, 62% used industrial IoT and advanced sensors, and nearly half used cloud or SaaS architectures, with the average project combining three or more enabling technologies rather than a single one. Manufacturing accounted for over half of all submissions, and 64% came from SMEs rather than large companies, while more than 72% of projects were developed with support from a competence centre, university or research institute, a pattern the organisers read as evidence that technology transfer support genuinely accelerates adoption rather than remaining a formality. Award winners illustrate the range of what "digital transformation" looks like in practice: De' Longhi won the Top Tech category for a quality-inspection system combining deep learning, machine vision and robotics; Inim Electronics was recognised for an industrial reconversion built on automation, robotics and AI; and Chiesi Farmaceutici received a special mention for applying digital twin technology to precision medicine manufacturing, giving other manufacturers considering similar investments a concrete sense of what technologies peers are actually combining and which combinations are being recognised as genuinely effective rather than merely aspirational.

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