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FARE INSIEME - Ep. 228 - CRIT, unity is strength. The path to open innovation was born three years earlier in the Emilia region

«The companies have experienced the usefulness and convenience of this collaborative innovation»

20/1/2025

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The concept of open innovation, closely linked to the American-style network culture and to the Silicon Valley that has shaped technologies and talents, was born in Emilia. It was CRIT that theorised and put it into practice, which today has twenty professionals 100% dedicated to the Italian market, 70 client companies and more than 2 million euros in turnover. A private consultancy firm founded on the initiative of 14 prestigious companies from the Emilia-Romagna region. Giampaolo Colletti interviews Marco Baracchi, General Manager at CRIT for FARE INSIEME

by Giampaolo Colletti

@gpcolletti

Photocredit: Giacomo Maestri e Francesca Aufiero

Looking far ahead, in time and space. A sort of superpower. More than that, actually. A need to make a difference in an increasingly competitive and unstable world. The story we are about to tell is about those who saw things far ahead, ahead of their time. Pioneers, you could call them. Because the protagonists anticipated a phenomenon that over time became very relevant. The one linked to open innovation, that is, an open, inclusive, systemic, visionary innovation. But let's take a step back, or rather sideways. Because you can decide to continue working in the same way and hope that everything goes well. Or you can rethink work, anticipating new trends, expanding the team, opening up to the market, riding the revolutions that knock forcefully on the door but that are often not welcomed, understood, nor anticipated. In the latter case, you perform open innovation. It is a relatively new concept, that of open innovation. In fact, it is a paradigm that states that companies can and must make use of external ideas, as well as internal ones, and access markets with internal and external paths, if they want to progress in their technological skills: this is what the father of this revolutionary thought, the American economist Henry Chesbrough, theorised in 2003. Focusing on open innovation is worthwhile: new network districts are born and grow thanks to a way of rethinking products, services, and solutions.

Profile of the network
. From America to Italy, specifically to Emilia. And let's go back to those pioneers that we anticipated above in our story. Because at the dawn of the new millennium, in that 2000 that was starting to shape companies with increasingly pervasive technologies, in the heart of Emilia a project came to life that represented a sort of pioneering example of that Open Innovation theorised three years later by Henry Chesbrough in Berkeley. Ultimately, the CRIT collaborative innovation talks about this and much more. It consists of an alliance between companies from different sectors, without prevailing mutual commercial interests, in which companies can exchange information on projects of excellence and on issues related to innovation and new emerging technologies. This allows companies to learn from the experiences of friendly companies, shortening the times related to technological innovation, while being available to share their experiences in a truly open perspective. It all started with fourteen visionaries led by the engineer Rossi, former administrator of Tetra Pak. Fourteen entrepreneurs had entrusted him with the task of creating this company based on an extremely innovative idea that might not have worked. Today CRIT has a staff of twenty professionals 100% dedicated to the Italian market, 70 client companies, with more than 2 million euros in turnover. Aim: to create a technological broker capable of finding the best solutions to specific problems, ideas and innovation needs in the international context and of having a network available to share solutions and technological excellence. After all, unity is strength. «First of all, having a team of experts who work full time for several companies (i.e. in universities, research centres and companies around the world) in different sectors but with common technological interests to analyse new technologies, with professional databases and artificial intelligence tools, creating a network that has been built in over 25 years, allows our members and customers to have reliable answers in a shorter time frame than what an internal technician who does not deal with it full time on a daily basis could do. We continue to do so after twenty-five years because companies have experienced the usefulness and convenience of this collaborative innovation.» This is what Marco Baracchi, general manager of CRIT, says.

The evolution of the project.
From the beginning to the present day. Over the years, this network of companies has expanded more and more until reaching the current 30 members. «The specificity of our members is that they are companies that have technological innovation as one of the key factors of their success. They are not commercial companies, but companies that have a product or service based on technology and continuous innovation. They are often leading companies in their sectors, even if they are perhaps niche sectors. In the market, they focus on quality and innovation rather than on reduction of costs to be competitive. And obviously they have an open mind and believe that this openness in a protected environment brings advantages compared to the closure of those who do not want to share information on enabling technologies because they are convinced that they have nothing to learn from others but only to teach», says Baracchi. This reality specialises in the research and analysis of technical-scientific information and in research project development activities. «There is so much useful knowledge available in the world today that it is good practice, before starting an innovation project, to check and see what has already been done externally and that you might be able to exploit in your own project», Baracchi specifies. Today CRIT is a model: companies from other regions have also joined, finding here an environment rich in cutting-edge industries and with a spirit open to sharing information. Always oriented towards improving people's lives, towards environmental sustainability and social responsibility. For organisations of excellence, the future is built together..

https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/

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