Makers project: an international workshop in Florence
On the 9th and 10th of May project partners from Horizon2020 Makers project met in Florence, hosted by our Foundation which is partner of the project since January 2016.
During the first day a workshop (a Business-Academia-Policy forum) titled “Upgrading strategies and trajectories for clusters, districts and regions”, was organized.
In the morning a Round Table with representatives of the academic, policy and business world opened the workshop. Chair of the panel was Lisa De Propris, Professor at University of Birmingham and coordinator of H2020 Makers project. The topics developed were related to Industry 4.0 in Tuscany, in particular how the territory and local companies understand and face the new technological challenges and the future measures to be implemented by local institutions to support companies in this change process.
The participants to the Round Table were:
- Silvia Ramondetta, Confindustria Toscana
- Veronica Bocci, DITECFER
- Francesco Mazzini, Fondazione Toscana Life Sciences
- Marco Tognetti and Laura Martelloni, Impact Hub/Agenzia LAMA
- Manuela Bigi, Regione Toscana
- Mario Tucci, Università degli Studi di Firenze
Afternoon session was more academic-oriented and had as main theme technological change and regional transformations. Paulina Ramirez, Lecturer at the University of Birmingham, and Marco Bellandi, Professor at the University of Florence, chaired this session, while the speakers were working on the projects or were invited as external. Among the topics: the level of technological readiness in an European regional context, the growing job servitisation in manufacturing, job polarization and the new skill requirement and new technological trends. Case studies of manufacturing reshoring phenomena in Veneto Region and of new technologies’ adoption in Toscana Life Science District were presented as well.
On the 10th May project partners had an internal meeting to discuss about the project management, its development and deliverables, plus some possible dissemination results to be further discussed.
