London School of Economics' associate director Christian Busch told PrintWeek: “Printers need to think more in design terms, coordinate production and work more in concert with other companies.
“This will ensure they have a greater understanding on how to innovate and can reap creative and financial rewards by building in innovation into the process from day one.”
Busch will be one of several speakers at Fespa's thought leadership forum, The Global Summit, which returns on 1 and 2 December.
This year’s summit, at the Andaz Hotel in Amsterdam, aims to focus print business leaders’ minds on how to identify market opportunities and how to exploit them for the benefit of their companies.
Delegates will hear from printers and other speakers. These include Nike global materials director Linda Keppinger, behaviour expert Jez Rose and Fespa leaders as well as Busch.
The cost to attend the summit is €995 (£709) discounted to €695 for members of Fespa's national associations.
Meanwhile key speakers will also form a centrepiece of Fespa Textile, formerly Fespa Fabric, which opens its doors alongside Fespa Digital in Amsterdam from 8 to 11 March next year.
Fespa Textile 2016 features exhibits from suppliers offering equipment, consumables and substrates.
These include Brother, Bullmer, Kiian Digital, INX Digital, Pongs, Screen Europe, MS Printing Solutions, Stahls and Kornit Digital.
Visitors will be guided to textile exhibits and content by the 'Textilewoman' icon, one of a line-up of Fespa “digital superheroes”.
On Tuesday 8 March, the Fespa digital textile conference takes place alongside the exhibition involving a day of sessions.
These range from insights into the growth and development of digital textiles from Infotrends' director Ron Gilboa to Sun Ski Sport's Daniel Arzt talking on using fabric printing to grow business.
Gilboa said: “Textile printing has become a very big opportunity for printers, wide-format and sign specialists.
“Around 35bn sqm of fabric are printed every year around the world, 995m sqm are digital, and the market will grow at over 37% per annum by 2019.
“There is huge opportunity for graphic arts, where we see the market for soft signage sublimation printing growing 24% year-on-year to 2019, enabling growth opportunities for print service providers.
“Digital printing on fabric is not new, but the market and technology has matured. We can now address almost every aspect of fabric printing with cost-effective systems for low- as well as high-volume production.
“So now even smaller businesses and designers can start small and broaden their audience because entry into the market has become much more cost-effective, democratising segments of the fashion and decor industry.”
Visitors who register online before 15 January 2016 will have free access to all of the Fespa events from 8 to 11 March; registration after this date will be subject to a €40 entry fee.
For more information on the global summit 2016 visit: www.fespaglobalsummit.com and for more information of Fespa Textile visit www.fespatextile.com.
