Chiara Pennasi, Fondazione Triulza: "Federated Innovation makes MIND a great place of experimentation"
Federated Innovation @MIND
Business Networking Engine designed to accelerate the innovation creation process within the MIND ecosystem
How important is MIND for Fondazione Triulza, and what is your forecast for the future of innovation in our country starting from the model represented by the district?
Fondazione Triulza was created to manage Cascina Triulza during Expo Milano 2015 and remained in the area to participate in the development of MIND. Working in this context, an innovation district, shapes our activities and our strategy. The theme of social impact, increasingly present even at the corporate level, reminds us that scientific and technological innovation does not exist in isolation but is and must be integrated into society, responding to people's needs, and communicating with civil society. We work to develop social innovation and involve communities in MIND. We do this work in complete synergy with MIND's stakeholders and have been recognized by the European Union as a social economy cluster, a very rare case within an innovation district: an intuition that looks to the future. Because, in my opinion, this is where the future of innovation in our country, and globally, lies: becoming aware that society is a complex system made up of different elements connected to each other, and thus must communicate. Every innovation has an influence on the ecosystem, not just its own sector. Every innovation is social.
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What is the role of social innovation in this context, and what are your initiatives to raise awareness among key stakeholders?
We see social innovation not as a separate element but as a transversal aspect of innovation, a new way of understanding it. For example, we developed the Social Tech project, a scouting and capacity-building path that involved 73 social startups and scale-ups. Now these technological projects with social impact must be immersed in MIND and connect with all its stakeholders to develop and experiment with new partnerships. Technologies are fundamental in various impact areas. Recently, with the Politecnico di Milano, we launched a pilot project that has already led to the creation of prototypes in response to the needs of social cooperatives working with elderly Alzheimer's patients and young people with mental disabilities. This new paradigm of social innovation involving STEM fields is at the heart of the Social Innovation Campus, where we ask young people to propose solutions for an inclusive and sustainable future through the use of new technologies such as AI.
What is the role of Federated Innovation in the MIND ecosystem, and how can the "Collaborate to Compete" model foster the development of innovation that is also social and sustainable?
Companies are fundamental interlocutors for us, with whom it is important to build alliances. Federated Innovation, which focuses on collaboration between subjects sometimes in market competition, is social innovation, making MIND a great place of experimentation. Starting from here, it is possible to develop co-design to concretely implement MIND's values as a city of the sustainable future. For those of us with experience in the Third Sector and the social field, the strength of collaboration is a certainty, and Expo 2015 has taught us that if we want to change the world, we must do it all together, overcoming barriers that, in my opinion, are more of form than substance.