Davide Fassi - Universities as Drivers of Social Innovation: Theoretical Overview and Lessons from the campUS Research

The series Research for Development serves as a vehicle for the presentation and dissemination of complex research and multidisciplinary projects. The published work is dedicated to fostering a high degree of innovation and to the sophisticated demonstration of new techniques or methods.

The aim of the Research for Development series is to promote well-balanced sustainable growth. This might take the form of measurable social and economic outcomes, in addition to environmental benefits, or improved efficiency in the use of resources; it might also involve an original mix of intervention schemes.

Research for Development focuses on the following topics and disciplines:

Urban regeneration and infrastructure, Info-mobility, transport, and logistics, Environment and the land, Cultural heritage and landscape, Energy, Innovation in processes and technologies, Applications of chemistry, materials, and nanotechnologies, Material science and biotechnology solutions, Physics results and related applications and aerospace, Ongoing training and continuing education.

Fondazione Politecnico di Milano collaborates as a special co-partner in this series by suggesting themes and evaluating proposals for new volumes. Research for Development addresses researchers, advanced graduate students, and policy and decision-makers around the world in government, industry, and civil society.

THE SERIES IS INDEXED IN SCOPUS

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13084

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This book is based on a research project calledcampUSIncubation and settings for social practiceswhich was funded under the2014 Polisocial Award, the Politecnico di Milanos social responsibility programme. It extends its framework of reference by supplementing it with the best practices that lay behind the actions undertaken, that is, by placing it within a broader international framework of reference which can guide the progress of scientific research, particularly in the field of social innovation.

Specifically, the publication posits and analyses the fundamental role that universities can play in guiding, fostering and testing scientific research in the context within which they operate. Indeed, there are already several examples of virtuous relationships between the spaces and skills that are present on university campuses and the local (physical and social) context in which they are situated. These projects create highly recognizable spaces which confer a strong sense of identity on them and which mobilize local communities through solutions that foster social cohesion and innovation. The publication tackles this paradigm from a variety of perspectives, in complementary subject areas, which involve profound differences in terms of methodology, potential impact, local legacy and the kinds of relationships that can be established with local stakeholders. Specifically, it analyses three areas of design that are implemented on different scales and over different standard time horizons, which have shown themselves to be central themes in the contemporary debate relating to research into social innovation, into co-design and into processes of open-source urban regeneration.

These four research areas are investigated by three different research department at the Politecnico di Milano in the areas of Design, Architecture and Urban Studies, Management Engineering. The research aims to confirm the university as a stakeholder capable of addressing the various local communities, of mediating between public and private as well as collective and individual interests, of setting experimental processes in motion in each of the four fields mentioned above, dealing with administrative, social, technical and management issues while at the same time developing new participatory models in order to achieve the greatest possible degree of inclusion and engagement.