Our country is crossed by strong concerns and worries about his fate, but not only economic and financial. While other countries are growing fast, Italy is in a standstill. As demonstrated by the history of the last fifteen years, when innovation, research, creation of infrastructure, level of competitiveness, modernization of public administration, employment, in a word, development, were dramatically stopped at the start point. A selfish country, where who’s growing up does so at other people’s expense, and the highest price is payed by youngs and the weaker social classes.
A country, finally, that did not understand the strong strategic worth of ICT, an area where there are serious cultural deficits. Many minds in our country don’t want surrender themselves to such a dark picture…
One of them is Roberto Masiero, Managing Director of The Innovation Group Manager and respected manager for his twenty years of international activity, who, together with many well-known names of the Italian scientific and technological context, such as Carlo Salvatori, Luciano Martucci, Roberto Galimberti Roberto Polillo, Riccardo Genghini and Olof Söderblom baptizes the birth of THINK! The Knowledge Innovation Foundation, a non-profit initiative, voluntary, independent, which aims to help the debate on innovation in Italy.
THINK! Foundation was born in October 2010 by the will of a group of people committed to promoting innovation in the fields of Economy, Finance, Industry and the University and benefits from the collaboration of a prestigious Scientific Committee and a network of influential international experts, such as Andrea Bonaccorsi, Giampio Bracchi, Gianluigi Castelli, Pier Luigi Celli, Fiorello Cortiana, Luca De Biase, Fiorella De Cindio, Derrick De Kerckhove, Giorgio De Michelis, Alberto Guidotti, Flavia Marzano, Osnago Alessandro, Francesco Sacco, James Vaciago and Michele Vianello.
The acronym of THINK! Innovation is The Innovation Knowledge Foundation and the logo is a thinking head, with the words THINK to represent the hair. The basic idea is to share and disseminate innovation policies giving rise to an independent, non-profit think tank, with the aim to collect, process, share and disseminate knowledge on the use of ICT, digital and science-driven , a free think tank to promote the culture of innovation as a tool for growth and productivity, to promote innovation processes, human development, quality of life and overcoming digital divide.
How? By networking talents, experiences, time of people who want to learn from things working, look for where they work, learn which policies are working there, where they function so as to replicate them in Italy.
The objective of the Foundation is to support managers and decision makers and help them understanding the new economy and stimulate innovation, thanks also by the sharing of cases of innovation through the application of ICT, digital and new technologies for economic growth and competitiveness of firms, industries and economies as a whole, breaking the stale atmosphere of the cultural debate in this country and the windows open to international experiences, creating a network of talent, resources and innovation projects to make concrete proposals in order to facilitate the transformation and growth of our country.
From the point of view of development policy, the Foundation aims to define policies to facilitate the agreement of creativity and capital, to free from insecurity flexibility by establishing a welfare state of knowledge, to propose standards to encourage access and sharing of knowledge produced in publicly funded research and an operational standpoint, the spreading ICT in public administrations, re-qualify the national ICT industry and to promote internationalization, to develop initiatives to developing countries with particular attention to the Mediterranean area.
The focus of the activities of the Foundation is on the creation of the Innovation Map (a collection of successful case histories) , on the promotion of local and international events, workshops and barcamp, on the organization of training programs and conferences in collaboration with universities , research centers, local and international institutions with the promotion and support of programs non-profit and for human development based on the use of information and digital technologies in emerging and developing countries. Today this map has 87 cases of innovation from all around the world, divided into 4 main categories, however, destined to grow from month to month, thanks to the great work that our researchers are doing within the Network
About a year after its founding THINK! has a global audience, having a good online presence and a large community of “followers” ever more numerous on the major social media platforms: specifically a Facebook page that counts almost 1500 fans, a Twitter profile and a large following so numerous group on Linkedin.
In addition THINK! has a community dedicated to the insiders. This community now has about 150 members and 10 working groups: Documentality and Digital Identity (DID), Young Innovators (GI), Digital Technology for Justice (TDG), ICT for Development (ICT4D), ICT for Health (ICT4H ), Cloud Computing and PA (ACFA), & Observatory on ICT & Non-Profit (ICT4NP), Entrepreneurs in the digital age (FDI), Energy and Environment (EA).
During this year of life, the Foundation has organized several workshops, the first being in March 2011, “Tales of Innovation Sprouts Network: Startup with web-based business”, organized by the working group of Young Innovators with a focus on new business trends born in the digital and the web. Then followed “The innovation difficult” reasoned and accurate reading of the state of technological innovation in Italy by Giorgio De Michelis and Alfonso Fuggetta discussion with the self-titled article, “Technological innovation and energy and environmental sustainability”, organized by GDL Energy & Environment, and the presentation namesake, “Philosophy and Technology of Documentality“, organized in collaboration with Euronotaries under the 7 th European Congress of Analytic Philosophy organized by the Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy University Life -Salute San Raffaele in Rome Michele di Francesco. Last event organized by THINK!, in collaboration with Forum PA, was the seminar “E-Government: Concepts and practices in mature and developing Countries” last October 24 in Rome.
Another strong point of the Foundation is the establishment of some observatories, first of all “Observatory of Cloud Computing in Public Administration”, coordinated by the Working Group on “Cloud Computing and PA” by THINK! in collaboration with Astrid foundation, established with the aim of creating a process to contribute directly to the diffusion of new technologies, architectures and methods of service essential to the efficiency of public administration.
Another THINK! observatory was born within the walls of is “Observatory on ICT & Non-Profit” with the aim of raise awareness of the importance of the ICT market and the opportunities of the “Third Sector” and how the third sector can make the most of, involving the public in an area of commitment ICT in Social that could help improve the quality of life. The observatory is producing a report that will be presented during the year 2012.
Last but not least of them, is the ‘Observatory on Technological Innovation and Sustainability Energy and Environment, (Working Group on Energy and Environment), which have already written the paper “Technological Innovation and Sustainability and Energy Environmental “presented on 2011 June 10, during a workshop. Currently, the Working Group Energy and Environment is working with major conference sponsored by Ecomondo.
In short, the Foundation THINK! is alive and productive, his research, news, events and cases of innovation are freely accessible to anyone, under a license “creative commons”, the site of the foundation www.thinkinnovation.org
THINK! is open, anyone who wants to participate in the Foundation can do this by contacting us on our network or at info@thinkinnovation.org
