Here’s another article dedicated to the speeches of the Lectio Pluralis of Art at the Centre 2017, focusing on the theme of design in social innovation. We present the testimony of Christian Zegna, administrator of BTREES, a New Media Agency working as an incubator of innovation processes for companies through complex strategies combining web, social networks, communication and interior design.
Valeria Cantoni, moderator of the Lectio, invited Zegna to highlight the relationship between new media and social innovation, and to illustrate how forms of digital communication work.
“Social innovation in the design field – says the spokesperson for the New Media Agency – is closely related to the world of work. Millennials look for a serene and happy environment in companies where they might work or in projects they might follow. A few weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg, one of the founders of Facebook, during a conference, claimed: ‘The purpose is what creates true happiness’. To be able to reach an objective has therefore become an extremely strong value in the work place, unlike years ago, when safety and other factors were the dominant aspects. Investing in the creation of comfortable work environments implies a remarkable process of social innovation.”
Zegna carries on to explain the influences brought by digital innovation: “I am very fascinated by how digital innovation has created new models of startups, associations, profit and non-profit companies. The change of the paradigm has been to shift from the mere purchase of a product to a registration to a platform. One example is Netflix, which gives you a vast quantity of video contents (films and TV series) without any time limitation for a monthly fee.”
The administrator of BTRESS continues to exemplify how the change of the communicative paradigm directly affects the tertiary sector: “There are realities which have well interpreted the theme of digital innovation to provide the user with a service, e.g. the company Le Cicogne, liaising families in need of a baby sitter with highly qualified professionals certified by the platform itself; or Epicura, physiotherapy home service; and Sport Grand Tour, an association allowing children to try out different sports to be able to choose the most appropriate. Bed & Care is also very interesting: a startup helping out people with mobility problems to travel, finding places to stay suitable for their condition.
The speech moves on to TV advertising and social media: “We have calculated how many spectators watch a TV programme with a 4% share. In Biella – which has about 45 thousand inhabitants – it would be followed by about 3000. In 2017, a few euros would be enough to reach such an amount of subjects with a message on social media. You can see how new opportunities of communication have developed thanks to these media: TV was a complicated and expensive medium, difficult to access by the creators of new projects, whereas now anybody can publicly appear using these instruments.”
The BTREES administrator concludes analysing the importance and the effects of crowdfunding: “In Italy, this type of self-financing does not only serve the purpose of collecting money, but also – and mainly – of creating a community interested in a specific project. This way, the idea can support itself from the very beginning, no matter who launches it.”
To know more, please read the article from BTREES blog.
Photo credit: BTREES.
