First edition of 'Innovation Camp' on innovation with a high social impact, organized by the Puglia Region. Winning ideas come from the outside and from below, it is urgent to put them into a system
The cultural and creative sector of the Mediterranean can drive the socio-economic recovery of Europe, when it enhances and shares the innovations successfully developed at the local level. Sharing, collaborating, co-creating: if a company really wants to innovate and position itself as an agent of change, it cannot ignore these processes. This is the message delivered to the more than 180 participants in the first virtual edition of the Innovation Camp dedicated to the theme "Open Innovation for Society", organized by the Social&Creative, the Community of creatives and social innovators funded by the Interreg MED Programme.
From Open Innovation applied to performing arts in the Catalan project "La Fura dels Baus - Epica Foundation" to Rijeka-based “Children’s House” using open innovation to support youth education and post-pandemic social cohesion. From the British bio-circular and sustainable fashion pioneer Rebecca Earley’s “HereWear Project” fostering sustainable and responsible fashion, to "The Storytellers", the intergenerational library’s service connecting a community of senior readers to children, for remote read-out sessions, up to "Makers Will Make and Marker's Block" the Cyprus-based makerspace hosting experiments with digital technologies of talented designers and artists who produce sustainable recycled fashion and design products: Innovation Camp 01 has provided a prestigious showcase for those innovative solutions, born in different areas of the Mediterranean, which have been able to leverage on the open innovation model to give new life to ideas, projects and businesses.
“The Social& Creative Community considers creativity and social innovation as engine of prosperity and well-being for the Mediterranean area, but also a concrete opportunity to actively involve all diversities in a participatory process of contamination that also impacts the decision-making processes of policy", pointed out the Director of the Research, Innovation and Institutional Capacity of Puglia Region, Crescenzo Antonio Marino.
The event also featured inspirational, keynote speeches by world-renowned expert on Open & Collaborative Innovation Marcel Bogers, Professor at Eindhoven University of Technology, who considers Open Innovation as a model for renewing the private or public sector, leveraging the processes of co-creation and collaboration with external resources. Sharing values, ideas, experiences and knowledge, design thinking, open-mindedness, collaboration: these are the keys to open innovation, regardless of the economic sector and scope of application; and Fernando Vilariño, chair of the European Network of Living Labs, who presented the living lab approach as a resource of open innovation, building effectively fertile ecosystems centered on citizens, according to an integrated bottom-up approach, thus confirming that territories and local communities can offer tremendous support for creativity and cultural innovation.
“We are moving quickly towards the integration of virtual and real life: on the basis of this new paradigm, new societies will be born in which creativity will become a powerful agent of change. Creativity is something extremely pervasive, just like technology: the challenge is, therefore, to use creativity to support any other market, even the most traditional ", said responsible of InnovaPuglia Research & Innovation Section Marco Di Ciano, while closing up the Innovation Camp #01 morning session.
The registration of the event is available on the project's YouTube channel at [this link].
Download the presentations of the speakers at [this link].
