The third preparatory meeting of the University Public Assembly (3 June) offered interesting inputs: to involve entrepreneurs in the academic teaching activity; to increase of the companies’ participation in the research projects; to map the mutual activity to foster the mutual knowledge on staff training in the service sector, to support the local key economic sectors, like tourism and agriculture; to expand the university cooperation to other scientific sectors, stakeholders and professional boards and associations.
The aim is to listen to the local stakeholders and to dialogue with them. After the other meetings held over the last weeks with the representatives of local authorities and TU, the third meeting was devoted to the entrepreneurs and the representatives of professionals, who met in Palazzo Roccabruna, the promotional venue of the Chamber of Commerce.
Numerous significant representatives of the local productive system welcomed the invitation of the University President, Innocenzo Cipolletta: the President of the Chamber of Commerce, Gianni Bort and its Secretary General Mauro Leveghi, the President of the Provincial Hotel Association Luca Libardi and its Director, Roberto Pallanch; the President of the Association of Small Enterprises and Craftsmen, Roberto De Laurentis; the Director of the Association of Industries Roberto Busato and its R&D Manager, Giovanna Malagnino; the representative of Coldiretti, the Association of Agriculture businesses Gabriele Calliari and its Director Mauro Fiamozzi; the President of the Italian Confederation of Farmers, Paolo Calovi and Massimo Tomasi, the Director of Confesercenti Trentino Gloria Bertagna, the Director of the Local Association of Trading Businesses, Giovanni Profumo and the Director of the Trentino Federation of Cooperatives, Carlo Dellasega.
Innovation is the keyword supporting the collaboration between the University and companies, as underlined by the President of the University, Innocenzo Cipolletta, the Deputy Rector, Aronne Armanini and the new Rector, Paolo Collini and by Claudio Migliaresi, the Rector’s Delegate for Technology transfer, patents and relationships with industries.
The University of Trento is currently active in innovation in all sectors of its mission. First, the training of students who are getting closer to the labour market and the long-life learning of the staff of the University, the public administration and the private sector. The University should be more active in the internships activation and in the creation of post-graduate courses to specialise and meet the training needs of companies. Students shall also be presented with the entrepreneur being successful role model of training, as an alternative to the university model, to inspire them and prompt them into getting in contact with the labour market.
To this end entrepreneurs shall be directly involved in the teaching activity.
The representatives of the professional boards and associations underlined the need to train and update the skills of the staff employed in the service sector, the need to make the University further study the markets and highlight the companies’ departments which are more adequate to start innovation processes, to fill the technology gaps. Tourism (hotels in particular), agriculture and cooperation are key sectors where the University can play a significant role, using various scientific skills, regarding cognitive science and physics, together with the most consolidated engineering and computer science. The agricultural sector highlights the need to deal with innovation in machineries, to adapt them to the mountain morphology and the cultivation techniques, and the need to measure the economic value of agriculture and its impact regarding the territory safeguarding.
For the University to innovate means to promote high-quality and competitive research and to deal with knowledge transfer. The debate highlighted that to foster the knowledge transfer is a key factor to lobby and face the shared problems, above all in Trentino where companies are pretty small and have different needs. Hence the need to invest in the mutual knowledge of university and companies, using adequate tools to map the activities. This process has already started also thanks to the inputs deriving from European research financial support (Horizon 2020) which prompted companies and academic networks into sharing their role as research leaders.
Among the desirable concrete actions, everyone agreed on the need to increase the co-participation of companies in research projects, also through the mediation of the relevant associations and boards of professionals. In order to foster dialogue it is necessary to apply the successful best practices to other sectors: for example the temporary employment of University staff in the Association of Industries, to directly understand the companies’ needs and to facilitate their ties with the academic world. This opportunity could be further developed to be applied to the Chamber of Commerce, to better understand the needs of SME. Another important element regards the norms dealing with financial incentives to companies (Provincial Law no. 06/1999) which needs to be updated, for example through biannual financing to support the initial phase of start-ups.