Partners

Politecnico di Milano is a scientific-technological university funded in 1863, which trains engineers, architects and designers. The Department of Design was created in 2013 from the InDACo (Industrial Design, Arts, Communication and Fashion). The 2021 QS World University Rankings placed Politecnico di Milano 5th in the world, third in Europe and first in Italy in the area of Art & Design.
In recent years the Department of Design has come to represent the largest design department in Italy, rivalling centres of excellence at the international level. It conducts research and provides training and consulting services in fields ranging from intangible design to concrete artefacts. The Department of Design is well experienced in joint research projects and brings outstanding competencies in introducing design-enabled innovation into diverse contexts, being a world leader in advancing design knowledge and in exploring and opening new fields of activity, such as the introduction of design methods and tools in the domains of services, social innovation, business strategies and business modelling.

Politecnico di Milano is participating in DC4DM as project leader through the cooperation of three research groups coordinated by Prof. Marita Canina – IDEActivity Center.

IDEActivity Center (Design Dept) is the Center of Excellence in Creativity and Design of Politecnico di Milano. The research core is devoted to developing creativity-driven methods – focused on the synergy between creativity techniques and design tools – that enable collaborative actions aimed at identifying and solving problems through the direct involvement of users. A specific focus is devoted to understanding how the current scenario of digital evolution is influencing the creative design process. Indeed, the center has developed the first theoretical version of the Digital Creativity for Digital Maturity model which aim to empower the human creative skills to guide the strategic application of emerging digital technologies – to create innovative digital solutions- in any field of application, boosting innovation.

CI.Lab (Design Dept) has matured experiences and capabilities in developing and managing creativity processes through the involvement and management of several projects that deal with the development of methodology and tools to promote entrepreneurship, ICT and creativity.
NECSTLab (DEIB Dept) with an expertise in the areas of reconfigurable computing, self-aware and autonomic systems, hardware/software co-design, embedded systems, and high-performance processors and systems will provide mentoring during the implementation of the model.

David Delafosse

Founded in 1816, Mines Saint-Etienne is the oldest French elite school of engineering outside Paris, part of Institut Mines–Telecom, the #1 group of graduate schools of engineering and management in France. With 2400 students, 25% of which international, 400 staff, 140 faculty, 8M€ of research contracts per year and 5 ERC grants hosted, it is a highly international graduate school of engineering science and management that combines human-size, high staff-to-student and staff-to-faculty ratios, closeness to industry and academic excellence. The Times Higher Education ranks it as the #1 institution in Engineering and Technology in both regions it belongs to : Auvergne Rhone-Alpes and Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur (Top 250 worldwide in 2020). Mines Saint-Etienne’s two campuses are located at the heart of two major French metropolitan areas and economic regions: Saint-Etienne in the Lyon Saint-Etienne metropolitan area and Auvergne Rhone-Alpes Region, and Gardanne in the Aix Marseille metropolitan area and Provence Alpes Cote d’Azur Region.

Mines Saint-Etienne is participating in DC4DM project as HE partner, particularly providing a ten years-experience with international multidisciplinary innovation workshops for highly motivated and selected international students. Co-designed with partner universities from the UK, Italy and USA, the “L*unchBox Workshop” activity has been experienced over the yeays by graduate students in innovation strategy, product and service design and engineering spanning over 40 nationalities.

Mines Saint-Etienne also has a four years-experience in disseminating techniques and methods experimented in this highly focused context to a broader audience of students in general engineering and groups of several hundreds of students (“Dynamo Days” activity at Mines Saint-Etienne and “Disrupt Campus” activities at the IMT network scale).

University of Madeira (UMa) is a state university established in 1988 on Madeira Island, Portugal. UMa is organised into 4 faculties – Exact Sciences and Engineering, Life Sciences, Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities – and 2 schools – Health Higher School and Technologies and Management Higher School. Despite being located in a peripheral area of Europe, UMa is an international university aiming to achieving excellence through education, research and service to regional, national and international communities. UMa promotes applied scientific and cultural research, enhancing its ability to establish strategic partnerships with companies and international universities. Scientific research regards Arts and Humanities, Education, Life, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Mathematics, Physical and Engineering Sciences and Social Sciences, and has received financial support from FCT/FEDER and the European Community through INTERREG international projects.

In the context of a small island, the local academic community plays the role and duty to prepare young minds and support local enterprises in developing the skills and strategies to respond to the current and future environmental, social and economic challenges. Madeira island needs more collaborative and interdisciplinary platforms and methods to ideate, test, implement and scale up innovations that can contribute to its sustainable development. From tourism to food production and distribution, from manufacturing to construction, from natural resources monitoring to public sector services and education, digital technologies can play a very important role on this small peripheral territory. Where resources are limited, where the equilibrium between natural resources offering and human needs is under constant threat, it is necessary to prepare future designers and entrepreneurs with the right mindset, capacity to collaborate and generate future sustainable and regenerative systems that can benefit to not just individuals and local economy, but especially the environment and the society relating with it. University of Madeira is participating in DC4DM project as HE partner bringing a variety of expertise from the field of design thinking and innovation, IT, entrepreneurship and management, bioeconomy and sustainable development.

Télécom Saint-Etienne is the engineering school of Université Jean Monnet in Saint-Etienne, and an affiliated school of the Institut Mines Télécom. It is accredited by the French national commission on engineering degrees to confer an engineering degree (diplôme d’ingénieur) in telecommunications. The engineering curriculum requires 3 years of study to obtain master-level diploma. The school offers a first-year core curriculum and then 9 specialized tracks in the second and third year of the engineering curriculum, including computer science, telecommunications, computer networks, electronics, optics, and image processing. The teaching staff is made of 48 permanent teachers as follows: 33 tenured teacher/researcher (23 associate professors and 10 professors), 5 teachers detached from college, and 10 teachers under full-time permanent contract. An administrative and technical staff of 26 persons support the teachers. The pedagogical activities involve 700+ students: 585 engineering master-level student (French “Grandes Ecoles”) and 148 in other curriculum (mainly Master in design and communication and web development). The school is supported by three research laboratories: Hubert Curien (UMR CNRS 5516), Institut Camille Jordan (UMR CNRS 5208), and laboratory ELICO (EA 4147). It participates to the French Institute Carnot Télécoms and Digital Society thanks to the quality of its research partnership with the private sector.

Télécom Saint-Etienne is participating in DC4DM project as HE partner. It leverages its experience in learning labs activities and in SMEs interactions to foster and promote digital creativity. First, Télécom Saint-Etienne learning lab — called IRAM — is a place for interactions and transdisciplinary between Humanities and Social Sciences & Engineering and technology. Its main fields of applications are culture, education, health, IT companies. The learning lab aims at bringing creativity and design thinking processes at the core of the engineering curriculums, and to help professionals and students to better understand stake and issues of the digital age. Second, the school also co-initiated with Centrale Lyon and EMLyon business school an international network of learning lab since 2014. It combines more than a hundred learning labs mostly in France but also in Belgium, Canada and Morocco. Second, Télécom Saint-Etienne experience reflects from its interactions with the private sector, mostly made of SMEs in our region. Those SMEs are structured in a cluster called Digital League (100+ companies) in the digital market area. These interactions also startups from “La Base” — Télécom Saint-Etienne incubator.

Established in 1997 Startup Madeira is the local entity responsible for the development and application of the European Commission’s Business Innovation Centres Program (EC-BIC´s). Startup Madeira’s mission is to serve as an instrument for regional development by supporting entrepreneurs in the implementation of their innovative business project at Região Autónoma da Madeira, from the consolidation of an idea to its practical implementation, providing an environment favourable to entrepreneurship, namely among younger people, and acting as a facilitator and central point of contact for an entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The multidisciplinary team at Startup Madeira provides consultancy, coaching and mentoring through the numerous programs, events and activities. It provides acceleration programs to startups, reunite entrepreneurs, both local and foreign, and it helps through a physical incubator, virtual office and co-work space.

Startup Madeira is a full member of EBN which allows it to provide additional support in the development of innovative projects, such as: exportation to foreign markets, internationalization/transnational cooperation, exchange of experiences, transfer of know-how and technology, as well as contacts with other enterprises supported by the innovation centres. It also contributes to an efficient and prompt connection with other programmes and entities linked to the European Union.

Startup Madeira is participating in DC4DM project as tech-driven SME, in particular by providing the following experience and types of expertise.

– internationalization/transnational co-operation, exchange of experiences, transfer of know-how and technology, as well as contacts with other enterprises supported by the centres. It also contributes to an efficient and prompt connection with other programmes and entities linked to the EU.

– provide support, helping to create conditions that will favour the appearance of micro/small businesses, by bringing to life entrepreneurship, modernization and business innovation. 40 companies monitored monthly by Startup Madeira and about 280 directly supported companies.

– It has participated in several transnational projects in programmes; It has previous experience in running mobility exchange projects: has participated in 4 calls of Eramus for Young Entrepreneurs, It has several years of experience in fostering an entrepreneurship education program in schools; It also streamlines support programs for entrepreneurs and local projects.

Andrea Botero Cabrera

Andrea Botero is Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture of Aalto University and conspirator at the design studio Suo&Co. As of August 2022 she will be Professor of New Frontiers of Design at Aalto University. Her design works explores technologies, services and media formats for collectives and communities. Through her research work she aims to understand how collectives come to understand the design spaces available to them and how designers could support more various infrastructuring processes around them. Andrea has a Doctor of Arts (DA) in New Media from Alto University, a masters (MA) in product and strategic design from the School of Arts and Design Helsinki and a BA in industrial design from Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

Roberta Anelli

Roberta is a Sociologist and Criminologist with a passion for social and technological trends. She has always dealt with new methodologies for the management and development of ideas, new approaches to understand the market and design the right target and personas, building the proper business strategy.
Experienced Business Innovation Advisor demonstrated history of working in the management consulting industry. Skilled in Innovation Management, Open Innovation, Innovation Lab, Business Model definition and Innovation scouting.
She has a strong experience in social trend analysis, working on the understanding and study of citizens’ and consumers’ opinions and behaviors, useful to companies for the analysis of new strategies, also using AI and NLP tools.

Vincenzo Tanania

Vincenzo is a Director in PwC New Ventures with the role of Innovation Team Coordinator. He gained experience in public and private sector with national and international customers.
He focused his multidisciplinary activity on innovation management, technology transfer, digital strategy, new business model definition, program and project management, business process reengineering and organizational restructuring.
He coordinated Strategic and Management Consulting projects aimed at enhancing the innovation potential of the production system also supporting services for the creation of new innovative Companies, Startups, Spinoffs.
He currently coordinates Nudge for Innovation, the PwC Innovation Programme promoting a culture of innovation and enhancing company’s resources and skills through a guided methodology, supporting employees in the ideation, development and launch of innovative solutions.

Tommaso Nervegna

With a background in interaction design, Tommaso has accumulated more than 14 years’ experience in product and service design, brand strategy, and customer experience.
His primary responsibility is supporting growth and learning by ensuring every team and project is equipped with the best design-led methods and knowledge.
To make this happen, Tommaso has spent the past 14 years working between Italy, UK, Middle East, Turkey, Greece and the Dominican Republic, working tirelessly to develop and deliver experiences to help teams and clients harness the power of customer-centricity to create new service and product experiences that people will love

Pawel Pokutycki

Pawel Pokutycki (PL/NL) is an interaction designer, researcher and lecturer at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague and Design Academy Eindhoven, The Netherlands. In 2005 he initiated early activities of the RFID Lab, later called the AR+RFID Lab, an experimental interdisciplinary platform for research in the application of Augmented Reality (AR) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies in the field of art and design. He is a core member of the Alternative Learning Tank (ALT), a nomadic school and artistic organization that focuses on research, creation and implementation of didactical programs on progressive and radical fields of knowledge which are often neglected by educational institutions. His recent projects focus on exploring relationships between new media theory, political, social and cultural studies by concept development and prototyping for interactive media. He believes in a methodology of design based on his own, peculiar interpretation of the Black Box Theory presented at a TEDx event in 2012. Currently he is conducting multidisciplinary research on « Humane Technology for the Global South: Ethics of Interaction Design in the (post)Colonial Context”, besides Europe frequently lecturing and giving masterclasses in such countries as Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, India and China.

Marco Taisch

Marco Taisch has been Full Professor at the Politecnico di Milano since 1991, where he teaches Advanced Production Systems, Sustainable Manufacturing and Operations Management and where he coordinates the Manufacturing Group of the School of Management. Since 2002 he has been particularly dedicated to the study of technological trends carrying out some technological roadmaps and studies of technologies foresight on manufacturing as a consultant for the European Commission. He is a member of the Board of EFFRA (European Factories of the Future Research Association), of the board of the Italian Intelligent Factory Cluster and of the Lombard Intelligent Factory Cluster. He is co-founder and scientific chairman of the World Manufacturing Foundation, under whose aegis is annually organized the World Manufacturing Forum, the world event for the definition of the agenda on manufacturing. He is a founding member of Miraitek4.0, two spin-offs of the Politecnico di Milano on Industry 4.0 issues. He is president of MADE – Competence Center Industry 4.0, the largest of the eight competence centers of the National Industry 4.0 Plan. Consultant to several companies including Leonardo, Thales Alenia Space and Siemens.

Manuel Zacklad

Manuel Zacklad is a professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM) in Information and Communication Sciences (ICS), holder of the « Expressions and Cultures at Work » chair, vice-president of the CNAM’s scientific council (2013-2018), and director of the Dicen-IDF laboratory (Dispositifs d’Information et de Communication à l’Ère Numérique en Ile-de-France, EA 7339) His research focuses on three topics that revolve around the digital transition and its consequences based on several theoretical approaches.
First, the study of social and organizational changes induced by the generalization of digital technology is approached from the perspective of document theory (documentarization and documents for action). The second topic is the design of new information dissemination and sharing systems involving new knowledge organization systems (socio-semantic web). Finally, the search for new forms of socio-technical innovation is part of the perspective of conviviality economies and is based on the analysis of cooperation processes taking into account the so-called « immaterial and relational » activities (semiotics of cooperative transactions). More recently, he has participated in the reflection around an interdisciplinary theory of design.
 

Matteo Losi

In April 2020, Matteo Losi was nominated Head of Presales Architect and Innovation for SAP EMEA South. This region includes Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Israel, Turkey, Middle East and Africa. Losi is responsible for developing knowledge and driving customer and prospect choice towards SAP’s innovative digital transformation and cloud scenarios. Previously, Losi worked as Digital Transformation Chief Expret and Database & Data Management Sales Director in SAP Italy to enhance SAP’s Platform and Digital Core strategy to help Italian companies develop Digital Transformation paths based on SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA. Matteo Losi joined SAP Italy in 2001 as Head of Presales & Business Development. In recent years he has held strategic roles in the presales area at EMEA level and in South Africa as Head of Presales Africa in Johannesburg. Before joining SAP, Losi gained significant experience at ST Microelectronics, Siemens, and as a consultant at Ernst & Young Consultants. Losi holds a degree in Electronic Engineering from Politecnico di Milano.