2025
Project leader: Manzini Raffaella
Duration: 2025 – 2027
Keywords: Intelligenza Artificiale, Processo di Innovazione, Imprese, Competitività
Partners:
- ECOLE – Enti Confindustriali Lombardi per l’Education (CAPOFILA)
- Università Carlo Cattaneo – LIUC
- Servizi Confindustria Varese Srl
- Associazione Ticinese Evoluzione Digitale
Description:
Artificial Intelligence is emerging as one of the most transformative technologies of our time, promising to revolutionise several industry and business sectors. Recent developments, including the rapid deployment of generative AI systems and regulatory developments in the EU, have increasingly focused attention on the risks and opportunities of AI. The Insubric region shares a strong industrial and technological base, being an area at the forefront of innovation and home to clusters in financial services, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and cutting-edge technologies. Given the relevance of this issue for the technological development and competitiveness of the Programme area, there are a number of common challenges and opportunities that can be addressed synergetically.
Starting with the scarcity of adequate tools, the lack of specialised skills, difficulties due to high implementation costs, and ending with growing concerns about data security and privacy and a general resistance to cultural and organisational change.
All these critical issues call for a common cross-border approach and the implementation of concrete tools that positively and consciously support the implementation of Generative AI. Specifically, the AI – GENIALE project focuses on the link between Generative AI and innovation processes in companies, where AI can help the area to further increase efficiency, develop innovative solutions and advance research.
The AI – GENIALE project intends, on the one hand, to study the application methods through which generative AI can really help enterprises to generate economic and social value from new ideas; on the other hand, to realise concrete tools facilitating the adoption of Generative AI solutions within innovation processes, in order to strengthen the ability to bring new solutions and products to the market, as well as to significantly improve business processes.
The approach that will be pursued is mainly based on a strong anchorage to the needs of the companies of which the partners are the expression, on a scientific rigour of the analyses and tools developed, on the constant attention to the cross-border value of the project (the tools and modelling will in fact be jointly developed and then disseminated and implemented in the various territories), as well as on the development of concrete tools that can be used free of charge by companies even after the conclusion of the project and on the exploitation of the digital platform developed in the previous programming period with the RISICO project in which all the subjects present in the partnership participated.
In WP1, a report will be produced that reconstructs the theoretical models that have studied the multiple possible relationships between generative AI and the different phases of the innovation process, together with a mapping of empirical analyses on the experiences of using generative AI in innovation processes.
In WP2 the experiences of companies that have already introduced the use of AI systems in innovation processes will be identified, in order to capture good practices and also critical elements and failures, and 25 case studies will be carried out on concrete experiences of the introduction of generative AI in innovation processes.
WP3 will lead to the creation of an Ebook containing guidelines to support the implementation of AI in innovation processes, to the upload of the guidelines in the digital platform of the project and to the final realisation of a Video Tutorial to help companies fully understand the purpose and how to use the guidelines. In addition, a webinar presenting the developed tools will also be conducted.
Finally, in WP4, after a gap competencies analysis, a training programme for reskilling and upskilling in the field of Generative AI will be developed through the delivery of pilot sessions and 3 webinars as addressed to companies in the Insubric area.
An innovative aspect of the project is to be found in the focus on the specific link between Ai and the innovation process. To date, in fact, there is still no clear analysis in literature and in practice of the link between generative AI and the innovation function, nor how it can materialise within the innovation and training processes of companies. For these reasons, investing in research, training and innovation in the field of generative AI concretised in innovation processes is crucial if we are to seize the several opportunities offered by this transformative technology, adopting a ‘supply chain’ approach capable of transcending geographical boundaries to foster common and shared technological tools.
Project leader: Creazza ALessandro
Duration: 2025 – 2027
Keywords: Trasporto Intermodale, flussi di trasporto, logistica, analisi di dati quantitativi e geospaziali
Partners:
- Università Carlo Cattaneo – LIUC (CAPOFILA)
- Regione Lombardia – Direzione Generale Infrastrutture e Opere Pubbliche. Unità Organizzativa Infrastrutture ferroviarie e Opere Pubbliche
- Regione Piemonte – Direzione A18 – OO.PP., Difesa del Suolo, Protezione Civile, Trasporti e Logistica – Settore A1809B – Pianificazione e Programmazione Trasporti e Infrastrutture
- Assologistica
- Scuola Uiversitaria Professionale della Svizzera Italiana – Dipartimento di Tecnologie Innovative
- Verein Netzwerk Logistik Schweiz
Description:
The SWITCH project addresses common challenges relevant to the Program area: primarily climate change and the related threats for the territories of the Alpine area. To address this, SWITCH aims to reduce congestion on cross-border roads by strengthening intermodal mobility and resolving traffic jams at border crossings. To achieve this objective, a cross-border freight transport optimization platform will be developed for the modal shift from road to rail and institutional guidelines will be drawn up to facilitate this switch. The testing of pilot transport services between Italy and Switzerland (and vice versa) will be proposed to understand the feasibility of the modal shift and the effectiveness of the optimization platform. Capitalizing on the experiences and lessons learned from previous projects, SWITCH evaluates the opportunities for modal shift from road to rail by analyzing the different product categories exchanged between Italy and Switzerland in order to select the most suitable ones for the modal shift. By considering an extended „catchment area“, it will be possible to generate critical mass for rail transport by incorporating different flows of goods: those that have origin and destination in the cooperation area and those that have at least origin or destination in the cooperation area. The project will start from an analysis of the demand for cross-border transport and the offer of intermodal transport services in the Program area, together with the study of the customs and transport legislation that regulates them. This will provide data and information to feed the intermodal transport optimization platform, which, through artificial intelligence algorithms, will allow the identification of opportunities for generating traffic volumes that can be shifted from road to rail. A further common challenge for the Program area will be addressed: the improvement of information interconnection regarding cross-border services. The pilot cross-border intermodal services will allow validating the solutions proposed by the optimization tool and examine the enabling factors of the modal switch, providing indications for drafting guidelines for facilitating the modal shift at a policy and governance level. The main outputs of the project include: a study on cross-border freight transport flows and on the railway system, the platform (tool) for optimizing the cross-border modal switch and the institutional guidelines. The main beneficiaries of these outputs will be: citizens (reduction in traffic with consequent improvement in the quality of air and life), local and regional administrations (by receiving information regarding the exchange of goods and the railway system, they will use the tool for planning activities), shippers – both SMEs and large companies (they will have a tool at their disposal to gain visibility of modal switch opportunities and evaluate possible modal shift opportunities) and operators of the intermodal transport chain (additional potential transport flow opportunities). The approach we intend to use is multidisciplinary, bringing together skills in logistics, transport, quantitative and geospatial data analysis, policy, and artificial intelligence systems. To achieve the objectives, a cross-border approach is essential: the project was born from a need relating to the road traffic loads afflicting the Program area, hence a cross-border cooperation intervention is essential to reduce the externalities related to these loads. The same cooperation is needed to collect information and data regarding freight flows and to test the platform through pilot projects. The innovative nature of the project is expressed on various fronts: compared to existing experiences, SWITCH proposes a horizontal (catchment area) and vertical (product categories analyzed) extension, and the development of an intermodal transport optimization platform, which makes the information relating to the flows of goods and available services visible in a single system, and feeds optimization algorithms based on artificial intelligence methods. This provides an integrated decision support system for operators and institutions (when there are only examples of portals that provide a list of possible available services). Another innovation of the project is that the tool will integrate the calculation of the impact of transport flows, measuring the three dimensions of sustainability: social, economic and environmental. As for the social dimension, the costs to society will be measured. On the economic front, costs will be assessed (e.g., Life Cycle Costing from the perspectives of the intermodal transport actors). Regarding the environment, environmental impacts will be measured, including CO2 equivalent emissions, e.g. according to the ISO 14083:2023 and the Global Logistics Emissions Council V.3.0 framework. The outputs of the project will be published as open access material and under a “Creative Commons” license.
Project leader: Belfanti Federica
Duration: 2025 – 2027
Keywords: Azione pubblica locale, comunità, area insubrica, attrattività territorio
Partners:
- Provincia di Varese – Ufficio sostenibilità ambientale (CAPOFILA)
- Università Carlo Cattaneo – LIUC
- Università di Pavia – Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche e Sociali
- ANCI Lombardia
- Regione Lombardia – UTR Insubria Varese
- Comune di Varese – Area VII – Valorizzazione del Patrimonio Culturale, Turistico e Sportivo
- Sezione degli enti locali – Republica e Cantone Ticino / Dipartimento delle istituzioni
Description:
The RigeneraTI-VA project aims at revitalisying local public action in a vast area of the Insubric region between the province of Varese and Canton Ticino. The motivation for the intervention stems from the shared observation that local authorities alone are unable to effectively tackle the challenges posed by ongoing social, economic, environmental and cultural changes. Just think of the demographic dynamics, with the progressive ageing of the population and trends of denatality, the growth of poverty indices and the increasing costs of municipal welfare, climate change and the impacts on the sustainability of the environment, lifestyles and mobility, the digital transformation that facilitates daily life but increases social distances, global competition, the difficulties in finding qualified labour for companies, the disintegration of communities and the reduction of democratic and political participation. In addition, in disadvantaged areas with underexpressed potential, there is also the rarefaction of services, the flight of young people, and the abandonment of land with increased hydrogeological and environmental risk.
Local authorities are the first actors that local communities rely on to face these challenges, but there is a growing gap between the complexity of the problems and needs to be addressed and the capacity or possibility to respond to them.
The size of the municipalities, although a robust process of aggregations has been implemented in the past decade in the canton, remains limited, with meagre human and economic-financial resources in the face of increasingly important tasks not only in terms of operations, production and service provision, but also in terms of the strategic care and development of their communities. On the Lombardy side, municipal fragmentation has remained substantially constant (there are 1504 municipalities), although, at least in the mountainous areas, municipalities are cooperating within mountain communities and are launching strategic paths with the Aree Interne – Agenda del Controesodo project of the Lombardy Region.
Regenerating local public action means reactivating the resources of a community in which public administration, institutional and social stakeholders, private enterprises, third sector associations and citizens can strengthen ties and forms of cooperation, on the assumption that local development hinges on the consistency of relational-social capital. Above all, but not only, on the Italian side, small and medium-sized municipalities (but also larger ones) are not able on their own to foster:
- the well-being and quality of life for citizens
- the attractiveness of their territory for investments, new enterprises, incoming tourism
- the competitiveness of their territorial heritage, which can make well-being and attractiveness sustainable over time.
The objectives of the project are:
- to help municipalities play the primary role of local director of their development, in inter-municipal and supra-municipal logic, consolidating “sustainable living”, participatory processes that help “decide together”, and the ability to “organise administration” in the face of new challenges
- activate capacity-building processes leading to the co-development of methods, tools and pilot actions with the simultaneous involvement of both politicians/administrators and officials, as well as stakeholders and citizens
- valorise and share the experiences and implementation paths of proximity authorities in Italy and Switzerland, also through the use of the FormaTI-VA digital platform born from the GovernaTI-VA project of the previous Interreg Programme 2014-2020.
The expected results of the project are the following:
- to build mutual knowledge and networks of cross-border relations
- implement a digital cooperation platform where capacity building tools (cases and experiences, operational tools, training products) co-built with municipal politicians and technicians together with stakeholders and citizens, easily transferable,
- define Italo-Swiss collaboration agreements to provide continuity over time and formalise stable relations of sharing and interchange.
On the Ticino side, a process of local authority reform was initiated some time ago, which has made it possible to reduce the fragmentation of the municipalities and to rethink their role as engines of local development and the constitution of cohesive and proactive communities. This experience constitutes a significant reference, albeit with due specifications, for the similar path that the project intends to trigger among Italian municipalities.
2024
The LISA Project (Learning, Inclusion, Salary, Ageing) aims to study the local effects of the interaction between four dimensions of inequality – continuous learning, labour market inclusion, wage gap, and workforce ageing – on business competitiveness and the labour market in the Italian part of Insubria. The project’s goal is to produce policy recommendations and management practices to enhance the competitiveness of businesses and improve their ability to attract, strengthen, and retain human capital in the Italian Insubria region, supporting local development.
Project leader: Emanuela Foglia
Duration: 2024 – 2027
Keywords: validation, adaptation, model, multidimensional, transcultural, rehabilitation, cognitive
Description:
Among NCD-related disabilities, cognitive impairment significantly burdens patients and their caregivers with specific long-term rehabilitation needs. Technology-enabled continuity of care may scale up the healthcare services to a broader target of people, that could benefit from telerehabilitation interventions able to deliver care at home.
New digital solutions implementation is often validated and regulated within the local or regional contexts, becoming viable, effective healthcare systems, without a large-scale global impact.
The knowledge to design sustainable and accessible healthcare services remains locally confined, not transferable to different contexts needing a reorganization of the healthcare system, a procedures/processes contextualization, an adaptation of professional figures involved, and a local definition of the reimbursement tariffs of reference.
A local adaptation could not be sufficient: the rehabilitation programs contents should also reflect the beliefs, attitudes, life background, typical of different geographical settings and therefore can be different from area to area. Moreover, the rehabilitation contents should be updated and diversified according to the transcultural characteristics of patients and the transnational features (such as attitudes, habits, life-styles, etc…).
The “MI RICORDO Project” aims to purpose a multidimensional model that, starting from the MAST (Model for Assessment of Telemedicine) approach, could support the effective validation and adaptation of telemedicine digital solutions in the different countries, considering safety, clinical effectiveness, patient perspectives, economic aspects, organizational domains, socio-cultural, legal, ethical aspects, finally acceptability, and reimbursement concerns.
This goal will be achieved by studying and redesigning an innovative digital healthcare solution, able to offer continuity of care for people with cognitive impairment, already developed in the Italian context, for its transferability and adaptation in 3 different transnational contexts (Italy, Portugal and France).
Partners will be firstly engaged in the translation, contents and transcultural adaptation of the innovative RICORDO (Rehabilitation Intervention of COgnitive Resources Domain-Oriented) rehabilitation care pathway.
RICORDO is based on a technology-enabled digital solution for the cognitive rehabilitation of people currently experiencing (such as acquired brain injury) or likely to experience cognitive disability (such as early neurodegenerative conditions).
This solution could be delivered through a telerehabilitation platform (web-based) or as a digital therapeutic (app-based), with an adaptable level of cognitive activities’ incremental difficulty.
The cognitive rehabilitation content covers most of the DSM-5 neurocognitive domains and can be organized into different rehabilitation program templates to meet tailored rehabilitation needs.
The RICORDO telerehabilitation path model has been previously pilot-tested (Rossetto et al., 2023) in a group of people with neurodegenerative disease (Mild Cognitive Impairment) in Italy.
The cognitive rehabilitation program was a specific intervention delivered with telerehabilitation platform (patients’ homes), intensive frequency (five days per week, 30-40 min per day) and limited duration (6 weeks) to promote cognitive abilities.
The clinical partners will test the acceptability and feasibility of this care pathway model. The solution efficacy could be tested in three pilot settings (such as hospital, nursing home, and home care setting), in different transnational contexts (Italy, Portugal and France). Two feasibility study and one randomized controlled trial will be designed and implemented for validating the digital solution effectiveness.
Digital solution and care pathway will be validated also through the MAST model, with a multidimensional approach.
2023
Project leader: Andrea Urbinati
Duration: 2023 – 2025
Keywords: breakthrough innovation; learning by failure; medical devices industry; search strategies; R&D collaborations; product recalls
Description:
“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” ― Bill Gates While an entrepreneur like Bill Gates recognizes the need to scrutinize the reasons for failure and learn from them, scholars have paid less attention to studying how failures affect a firm’s processes and how the whole organization might learn from its errors. The need to unravel how firms react and learn by failure is particularly salient in innovative processes, which are more likely to fail because of their uncertainty, risk, and complexity. Any firm that could reap the benefits of learning from failing innovation projects might improve its innovative performance. This aspect is compelling when looking at the development of a particular type of innovation: breakthroughs. Innovative processes finalized to such impactful innovations are characterized by more novelty and possibly more likelihood to fail. While searching for breakthrough innovations might lead to more failures, firms might still enhance their innovation capacity and breakthrough development through an efficient and effective process of learning by failure. The present project aims to contribute to solving a relevant issue for society, i.e. the development of safer breakthrough medical devices, by analyzing how firms’ capabilities to develop breakthrough innovations may be affected by learning by failure. A better understanding of how breakthroughs in the health industry may support European firms in dealing with the complexity, uncertainty, risks, quality, and security requirements that characterize this process. The definition of more effective approaches for developing breakthrough innovations may enhance the firms’ innovativeness and competitiveness as well as the health outcomes achieved by citizens, healthcare providers, and national and regional health systems. The project aims to achieve two main objectives. First, a quantitative assessment of the relationships between the firm’s capability to develop breakthrough innovations and the emergence of innovation failures, with a specific focus on the two most relevant approaches that firms use to cope with uncertainty: search strategies (i.e. the balance between exploration and exploitation) and R&D collaborations. This will allow for defining a novel, systematic framework, enriching the existing literature by clarifying under which conditions innovation failure may favor or hamper breakthrough innovations. This novel framework is then exploited to pursue the second objective, aiming at developing a set of best practices, i.e. managerial tools and procedures, that firms can implement to better exploit learning by failure in their future innovative efforts. These best practices result from multiple case studies in which the insights provided by the quantitative framework are further analyzed and aligned with the internal innovation processes carried out by firms operating in the medical devices industry.
Partner:
Project leader: Andrea Urbinati
Duration: 2023 – 2025
Keywords: management engineering; decision making; environmental and ecological economics; circular economy; circular transition
Description:
To support transition to CE, firms are called to develop and implement effective CE initiatives. To this aim, they need proper decision-making tools, supporting them in identifying and carrying out the best suitable set of these initiatives and in evaluating the obtained results. Even though in these years there has been a growing amount of research on CE, very few studies have addressed this issue from a strategic point of view (Bocken et al., 2016). Most of them have proposed taxonomies of CE business models (Pieroni et al., 2019), with little theoretical argumentation for what CE strategies to be adopted in specific contexts and circumstances. Our aim is to address this need by developing an integrated decision-making tool for CE supporting three key phases: 1) the strategic phase, suggesting firms the most effective CE strategies to be adopted, 2) the planning phase, identifying the managerial practices to be implemented for putting into practice the selected CE strategies, and 3) the control phase, proposing specific indicators to monitor the progress and the overall results achieved (Figure 1).
To pursue this aim, we adopt a capability-based theory approach. We argue that the production capabilities (such as infrastructure or technology) enable firms to effectively adopt the CE strategies. To identify the proper fit between CE strategies and the production capabilities, we drawn on recent economic complexity tools used to capture the country’s green production capabilities (Higaldo et al., 2007; Fraccascia et al., 2018; Mealy and Teytelboym, 2020). We will purposively develop a “proximity” index capturing this fit. The higher the proximity, the more the firms in a given economic sector have the proper production capabilities to effectively implement that specific CE strategy. Furthermore, we argue that the appropriate set of managerial practices that allow the implementation of CE strategies will be based on a wider set of specific firms’ capabilities. These managerial practices can involve strategic, organizational, and technological factors, affecting the successful implementation of CE strategy within the firm (Urbinati et al, 2017; Ünal et al., 2019a). Our aim is to define a tool that assists the planning phase by supporting the selection of a specific set of managerial practices, fitting the firms’ capabilities and the CE strategy selected. In order to guarantee that the CE practices are effectively implemented, it is important that the implementation process is monitored by means of proper CE indicators. A high number of performance measurements have been developed, differing in purpose, scope, methodology, and scale (Fraccascia and Giannoccaro, 2020). Despite this, clear guidelines to design and select CE performance indicators are still lacking. Accordingly, we classify CE indicators and develop a tool that assists the design and choice of CE performance indicators matching the selected CE practices.
Partner:
Project leader: Chiara Gigliarano
Duration: 2023 – 2025
Keywords: New poor; New inequality; Mutldimensional and fuzzy approaches; Small area estimation; Social policies; Microsimulation models
Description:
The war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, and rising inflation pose different challenges as they risk exacerbating the effect of the recent Covid-19 pandemic, increasing inequalities and changing poverty scenarios worldwide. The importance of these themes calls for ascertain what the best policies and approaches are to effectively face up to the consequences of these events. MYPEOPLE aims to address the consequences of this crisis on people well-being, social inclusion, lifestyles and behaviours in order to monitor the worsening living conditions of people already vulnerable to poverty and discover new people asking for social and financial help, especially among the middle classes. Furthermore, the rise in the prices of certain essential foodstuffs has a crucial effect on people’s lifestyles and habits. While it is known that the pandemic has affected job prospects, economic possibilities, sociality, sports, food consumption behaviours and healthy eating habits/behaviours, the synergistic effect and its differences among local areas or specific population groups are completely unexplored. Accordingly, MYPEOPLE’s research strategy is characterised by the following four basic objectives: 1) Analyse the current welfare systems of the three regions under study (Lombardia, Toscana, and Campania). The regions involved in MYPEOPLE project represent three important areas of the North, Centre and South of Italy where the quality and conditions of life are considerably different. 2) Carry out probability-based surveys in the three regions and build a dataset with updated information on household living conditions, with a special focus on health and food safety. Indeed, the substitution effect of food products due to the impoverishment of families following the energy crisis and the unavailability of certain raw materials will be added to that of the pandemic, with local peculiarities that depend on the presence in the territory of associations with a charitable vocation, on the environmental conditions, on the presence of products more or less healthy and on the policies implemented by local governments. 3) Use the survey results to provide a collection of indicators at a local area level and estimate statistical models for measuring the effects of the recent crises on household living conditions from a multidimensional perspective. 4) Evaluate welfare public policies through the analysis of survey results and formulate policy recommendations for local welfare system improvement. The project is characterised by specific territorial dimensions to be able to propose intervention strategies that take into account the territorial heterogeneity of the investigated areas and the specific needs of the different categories of people and/or families.
Partner:
Project leader: Raffaella Manzini
Duration: 2023 – 2025
Keywords: agent-based modelling; innovation; inequality mitigation; sustainable development; macroeconomic policies; complex systems
Description:
Sustainable development and inequality mitigation are two main challenges that government and policy regulator have to address in general and even more after global crises. These challenges ask for innovative solutions that must consider economic and innovation systems as complex systems characterised by non-linear relations among their constitutive elements and by dynamic continuous evolutions. Following this premise, the present project is aimed at developing an agent-based model platform to perform ex-ante evaluations of innovative policy measures in a virtual laboratory, to identify policy guidelines fostering innovation as driver of sustainable development and inequality mitigation of countries and regions. The general objective of the project is to enrich the EURACE model, that includes many different kinds of economic agents and policy makers (e.g., the government and the central bank, responsible for fiscal and monetary policy, respectively) with the processes and networks of innovations. In particular, the capital good producers, which produce investment goods (i.e., machineries), and consumption goods producers will be connected by innovation networks and these will help to implement business innovation faster and more efficiently. Both the technological and process innovations will be considered. In the project, the reference unit of analysis will be Italy and different territorial articulations (i.e., Italian Regions) will be included in the analysis in order to evaluate diverse territorial levels and their heterogeneity in terms of innovation performances and development paths. The enriched version of EURACE will allow us to simulate with a bottom-up approach the effects of a mix of fiscal, monetary and social policies. The project will have a scientific and technological impact improving the state-of-the-art of methodologies and techniques used to develop tools for supporting big challenges such as the sustainable development and inequality mitigation, and, in general, the policy making process. By its nature, the project will cross-fertilize and advance current technologies in the fields of agent-based modelling and simulation. The project will have also a social and economic impact by improving knowledge and tools for supporting countries, regions, and industrial organizations. Indeed, non-conventional coordination among fiscal and monetary policies, regulatory measures of markets and sectors, expectations of economic agents able to manage the complexity of the economic system (by properly taking into account the heterogeneity, the bounded rationality and the interacting networks) will help policy maker in avoiding the major negative impacts of global crises and in improving the citizen welfare.
Partner:
Project leader: Rossella Pozzi
Duration: 2023 – 2025
Keywords: Teaching Factories (TF); Learning Spaces and Activities; Circular Economy; Sustainable and circular manufacturing; Servitization; Industry 4.0
Description:
The last decades have clearly shown the relevance of manufacturing in our Society, at the global and national levels. Manufacturing generates value for global trade, accounts for most of the jobs, and contributes to global economic value. Italy is among the top players in manufacturing, and manufacturing is the main sector contributing to the national economy. Unfortunately, manufacturing – when not properly managed and developed – has also some deep impacts on our Society: global warming, pollution, and resource depletion to name a few. This is no more acceptable. For the next generations, a new sustainable model is needed, and new Sustainable and Circular Manufacturing is needed too. Europe – rooted in manufacturing since the first industrial revolution – is leading this discussion globally, with its Sustainable Development Strategy. Sustainable Manufacturing calls for many transformations, from customers’ habits to production facilities, from open chains to closed and circular processes. Among these transformations, technological evolution is acting – as usual – in a push way. Technological progress could provide suitable solutions for greener, more reliable, resilient, and sustainable manufacturing under the umbrella of the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0). Such industrial evolution is becoming a key concern for many organizations due to the challenges brought forward. Higher Educational Institutions are expected to arm graduates with the knowledge and competencies required to support organizations to remain competitive in an Industry 4.0 context, but the rapid advances in technology raise doubts about whether this can be achieved with standard educational models. Meeting this and future challenges requires transformational changes in the way engineering students are educated, reshaping the understanding of what are the contents (knowledge, skills, and competencies) engineers should possess, how Learning Activities (LA) should be developed to allow competencies learning and assessment, how it should be taught, and how Learning Spaces (LS) should be designed. The TechFact project aims to support the education of engineering and technical students, giving them the needed skills and tools to afford such challenging times. The project wants to define guidelines for designing new LS and LA to be used in the modern manufacturing education field, for supporting an effective and adequate learning experience. The project is based on a list of empirical research activities, to be run in the Teaching Factories available among the project partners and in their international networks. The research outcomes are meant to inform the design of LS and LA that consider the crucial matter of sustainability, circularity, and digitalization and to contribute to the current developments toward a new paradigm in industrial engineering education. The results will have several implications for future research involving LS and LA in manufacturing education.
