In 2024, the Conference is dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the SFedU Faculty of Management and the thirtieth anniversary of management education at Southern Federal University.

The annual ITIBSM Conference has established itself as a platform for the exchange of ideas and experiences in such areas as current trends in international management and business, the imperatives of smart and sustainable management in the digital environment, human capital in the innovative economy, innovation management in the economy of sustainable development and global environmental change, environmental management.

Anatoly Metelitsa, First Vice-Rector of SFedU, addressed the conference participants on behalf of Inna Shevchenko, Rector of SFedU. He emphasized the importance and relevance of the topics discussed and the experience of the Southern Federal University in building management programs for sustainable development.

"The ITIBSM conference draws attention to issues of sustainability and governance in modern conditions, especially given the rapid changes in society and the world as a whole. Scientific achievements should be integrated into educational processes in order to better prepare students for the future. We are pleased that students are present at the meetings and sections of this conference, will hear reports from colleagues from other universities, and will make presentations themselves at the youth forum of the conference, because this is a guarantee of the future implementation of theoretical knowledge in practice," Anatoly Metelitsa noted.

The President of SFedU, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor Marina Borovskaya noted that in the field of higher education, which is currently being actively transformed in Russia, highly qualified management personnel are needed who possess innovative and advanced management approaches, largely borrowed from business.

"Higher education is changing due to digital transformation and the introduction of pedagogical design. The transfer of knowledge from science to education directly affects the effectiveness of the scientific and technological cycle. We could use artificial intelligence technologies in the educational process, but how exactly? Only management professionals are able to evaluate existing practices in international business, for example, and adapt them to our tasks," Marina Borovskaya shared.

Professor Elena Lazareva, Head of the Department of Innovative and International Management at the SFedU Faculty of Management, added that the scientific school, historically established at SFU, has become the center of management science in the South of Russia.

"We focus on new research priorities in the field of managing the sustainable development of international business and practical tools for their implementation. That is why so many foreign partners are interested in our discussion. Today, management scientists and practitioners from Russia, Belarus, China, Serbia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Armenia and other countries are with us in a mixed format," said Elena Lazareva.

The conference was also attended by Yuri Alekseevsky, Vice-President of the Rostov Region Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Igor Yurgens, Head of the MGIMO Center for Sustainable Development, Dmitry Kuvalin, Deputy Director of the Institute of National Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Zhang Shoufeng, Vice-Rector of Taishan University (PRC), and other representatives of Russian and foreign universities and partner companies.

Following the results of the conference, it is planned to publish a thematic collection of papers, which will be indexed in the Russian Science Citation Index (RISC) and posted on the eLibrary platform.