The three-day workshop "Dream, Design, Disrupt - AIESMA Startup", financed by the AIESMA - EIT Manufacturing 2024 Summer School Project, was successfully concluded.
A unique experience, dedicated to innovation and creativity, in which students from Italy and abroad participated from 12 to 14 December 2024. The common goal was to create startups for the manufacturing sector, with a focus on artificial intelligence and sustainability and a very practical approach to experience first-hand what it takes to transform an idea into a profitable business.
On the first day, the students lived an immersive experience in an environment of sounds and images, thanks to the extraordinary participation of the Colombian visual artist Orlando Rojas Gutierrez, who accompanied all the activities of the three days with his work.
Subsequently, Francesco Guzzonato (UniTrento), Iacopo Carreras (ThinkIn) and Stefano Gallinaro (HIT) introduced the key themes of the workshop, explaining how and why "innovation" and "resilience" represent the pillars of startup culture. The day ended with a practical workshop in which the participants, divided into teams, designed personalized logos, printed on vinyl paper and manually applied on their t-shirts, accompanied by the guys from the FabLab Unitrento.
On the second day, the focus shifted to strategies for addressing the challenges of a startup. Francesco Bonadiman (Spazio Dati), Danilo Ropele (FBK) and Veronica Barchetti (HIT) highlighted the innovative solutions available to a start up with the "ideation session". With Francesco Guzzonato the students were involved in a workshop on the topic of idea generation. In the afternoon, Gloria Cannone (HIT) and Silvia Zancarli (EIT Manufacturing) guided the students into the intricacies of team work, together with Enrico Blanzieri (UniTrento) and Milena Bigatto (HIT) who - in close contact with the teams - provided support and feedback to improve the ideas developed by participants.
Finally, on the third day the workshop the participants were able to experience a highly interactive session of Lego Serious Play, facilitated by Piergiorgio Lovato. Through the use of Lego bricks, participants explored what can cause a start-up project to fail by thinking about the internal and external challenges that teams face. In doing so, the students constructed a reverse pitch. Finally, the students were able to reflect on the intertwining of creativity and AI, guided again by the work and stimuli of the artist Orlando Rojas Gutierrez, who made this intertwining a visual work of art created over the two days at the SOI.
Dream, Design, Disrupt combined creativity, technology and strategy, offering students concrete tools to face companies' real challenges.
The workshop was organized by DISI - Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Trento and by Fondazione HIT, developed as part of the AIESMA Summer School funded by EIT Manufacturing, and in collaboration with the FabLab UniTrento