There is no Smart City if there are no Smart Citizens. And, there are no Smart Citizens if there is no proper education within and beyond the traditional schemes. The new UniTrento interdisciplinary learning path and connected interactive Labs are designed to help students, the city and the territory turn their ideas into reality.
CLab Trento (Contamination Lab Trento) is a physical and digital creative and stimulating space where new things take shape. The most popular activities organized in the framework of the CLab Trento:
- Start Up Lab (SUL), an UniTrento interdepartmental Lab dedicated to master students, PhD and Post Doc where they can test, practice and refine their skills in innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E). It is quite different from average textbook courses since it offers the possibility to interact with experienced coaches and mentors and other teams to generate, refine and test one's own business idea. SUL is part of a life-long learning experience in I&E designed to give to future managers or entrepreneurs the essential soft skills to effectively manage innovation.
- Innovation Olympics: Corporations from different industries define an exciting and difficult challenge they are currently facing in the market - this is the "Innovation Challenge". 4-5 groups of 4-5 students from different disciplines, countries and cultures focus on the challenge for 8-10 weeks. They cooperate with the team mates and compete with other teams to propose well grounded, creative and unique solutions. Experienced mentors and coaches provide expert guidance along with tools, training, and coaching to build more lasting innovation capability and leadership skills.
- “Be exposed” Track: International top managers, entrepreneurs, startuppers, policy makers, investors, venture capitalists, game changers come to CLab Trento to share their experience and provide hints and stimulus to your ideas. When you apply to SUL, you can express your preference for a specific subject and, in case of convergence of interests, we will provide a senior speaker on such subject.
- “Make it Happen” track: CLab Trento hosts all around the year events focused on I&E participants will have a preferential path to attend. Jus to mention a few: Startup Weekends, where you can develop your own idea in 54 hours; MIM Business Challenge, a local student competition opening the doors to Virginia Tech global student innovation challenge (UniTrento students won in 2014 in the USA against teams from 13 nations); Startup Spritz and Storming Pizzas, stimulating networking events; gathering and internships together with Tech Peaks startuppers,
The best part of it is that you will be actors in this environment – not just spectators. This is your start-up opportunity. Together we will complete this Minimum Viable Product to make it work smoothly and become a real center of excellence in Entrepreneurship and Innovation. At the same time, we will coach you to win in this ever changing challenging working environment.
About us: The blog of "Corriere della Sera" about CLab Trento (Italian language)
- Video: Introduction to Start Up Lab
- Video: Life of a Project
Further information: roberto.napoli [at] unitn.it