In this presentation that I gave at the Italian Embassy in Washington DC, I provide a quick introduction to the Meridian Fellowship on Social Innovation and to my project, Talent Europe,
I then present some of the latest numbers regarding the implementation of the SME Innovation instrument, one of the most innovative parts of the 8th presentation Framework program called Horizon 2020
I also discuss about three concepts that I think might be interesting to explore as a basis of a useful comparison between Europe and US science and technology Policy.

On May 4, 2015, Meridian welcomed the inaugural cohort of the Meridian Social Innovation Fellowship to Washington, D.C. The eight Fellows – who hail from Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain – are global problem-solvers who bring together networks and resources to solve critical challenges facing their organizations, communities, and countries. Meridian has brought together this distinguished group to drive ground-breaking advancements in the fields of youth and women empowerment, cultural integration, entrepreneurship, science, technology, and education. Alberto joined the program to develop TalentEurope.

Alberto coordinated the Junior Chapter of the Ambrosetti Technology Forum. The report presented during the 2014 meeting in CastelBrando insisted on the need to empower researchers, and their role in the national innovation system. Take a look at the videos and presentations on the Ambrosetti website

During 2014 I took part to the works of the High Level Group on Innovation Policy Management. This group of experts from Academia, Industry and Government worked on the definition of a set of recommendations for the European Innovation Ecosystem. The group met three times, in Dublin, in Amsterdam and in Rome, and it is due to produce the final report in the course of the month of August to the Italian Presidency of the European Council.

Italian public universities should emphasize the need to accompany researchers to the market, rather than to focus on the interfaces to transfer technology, through patents…

The presentation I shared today with the audience of Calabria Innova, can be found here.

The platform Talent Italy www.talentitaly.it is online.

The first challenge prize is focused on Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs). To the best course developed by a researcher, teacher, start-up 100K EUR.

Just coming home from the official trip of Minister Maria Chiara Carrozza to China. We traveled to Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai, meeting a vibrant community of Italians, doing business, cultivating arts, studying and researching in this country. I was impressed by their enthusiasm and positive attitude towards future perspectives. During talks with high level officials of the Chinese Government, research centers and universities we emphasized the priority to increase scientific collaborations between China and Italy.

This is the presentation (in Italian) that Andrea Paraboschi (SSSA) and I shared with the Green City Energy conference in Pisa. We illustrated the main guidelines of Minister Maria Chiara Carrozza’s agenda.

We discussed about the need to be focused, to be inclusive and to challenge Italian’s creativity and talent.