IMI Academy is a very interesting project; it is the first inter-company Academy, as well as a social enterprise, that has had the ability to bring together major companies in the province of Treviso with the aim of creating training paths designed to increase the digital skills of their employees. The goal is to then immediately invest this capital right in the very territory in which the companies fit. A new president, Andrea Maccari, was recently elected: we interviewed him!
How and why did IMI ACADEMY come into being?
As a councillor for productive activities in the municipality of Giavera del Montello (TV), and based on the experience gained at the professional level, I conducted an analysis of the needs of the area, its companies and its human resources. What I was able to see was that among the most pressing needs of manufacturing and industrial handicrafts was that of acquiring an increasing awareness regarding digital culture and the role that new technologies can play in all sectors. Companies need to know in order to be able to make the most of the great opportunities that digital transformation offers in all areas: in production processes, marketing, service, security, promotion... Only by creating digital culture will companies be able to make themselves autonomous and aware in the restructuring activity that already represents one of the greatest challenges to being competitive in the markets. So, as a result of these reflections, I began to bring together the players necessary to start a training project in step with the times: the public, represented by the Municipality of Giavera del Montello; the business world, with ten very varied corporate realities that have partnered to create the unprecedented formula of an inter-company and inter-sectoral academy; and the training institution, with the FITSTIC Foundation, which already organizes ITS courses in the ICT field in Emilia-Romagna. Thus, in July 2021, IMI Academy was born.
What are the main activities?
The current one is the first training year of IMI Academy. We currently have about ten students, all from our member companies, who are going through a 600-hour training course on Virtual and Augmented Reality. The method we are using is that of learning-by-doing: after learning the fundamental theoretical notions to learn programming and modeling, the students are now engaged in a project-work that will lead them, by the month of July, to create a virtual reality prototype dropped on the real needs of the company they come from. At the end of the course, member companies will have an employee capable of overseeing XR projects, but also a product they can leverage within their own production, or service, rather than marketing processes. From next year we intend to expand our training offerings by launching courses in the areas that are most pressing right now for the companies we are interfacing with: artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, digital-marketing, block-chain, digital factory. In short, our goal is to be able to be a point of reference for companies and young people who want to be accompanied in the magnum sea of ICT.
IMI Academy is an innovative reality with high social value: can you explain how human resources are enhanced in this project?
I am convinced that in the digital age man has returned to the center of business processes, and I am equally convinced that as long as man delves, studies and learns, technology remains human-centric. The creation of a school specializing in ICT aims to facilitate the generational transfer of know-how, which must necessarily take place by involving and enthusing new generations, who in innovative ways can digitize and pass on industrial processes. This reduces the risk of losing vertical skills in the production chain and promotes the generational transfer of know-how. Thanks to the close collaboration that IMI Academy has established with the ITS foundations FITSTIC and Volpato, as well as with Ca' Foscari University and its spin-off Upskill 4.0, our training institution aims to become the point of reference in the area for young people who want to take this path, but also for companies, which participate directly in the definition of a training plan dropped directly on their own needs. Our formula also takes into account the human resources already present in the company, which need to be continuously updated and revalued. In short, we teach new recruits, who have digital in their DNA, to apply their knowledge to business needs; and we teach veterans the fundamentals of digital, so that they can continue to be valuable resources within the business cycles.
What are the main projects you have initiated? And what results have you achieved?
Net of the training course that has been launched and those in the planning stage, the big project we have structured concerns the creation of an ambitious network project between the various levels of expertise that must necessarily work together to create fluidity of teaching and effectiveness of knowledge transmission. The newly appointed seven-member Board of Directors of the Academy includes, in addition to myself and my predecessor Mario Conte, Alberto Zanatta, who in addition to being president of Tecnica Group, is president of ITS Volpato and deputy president of Assindustria Venetocentro, and Gaudenzio Garavini, president of the ITS FITSTIC Foundation to represent the business and ITS worlds. Then there are Selena Brocca, Director General of Upskill 4.0, which is a spin-off company of Ca' Foscari, and Paolo Paramucchi, president of ANTEAS Ferrara, representing the university and association worlds. And finally, our CEO is Luigi Vitellio, who is also the chief operating officer of the FITSTIC Foundation.
Soon the CDA will appoint the Scientific Technical Committee, which will be in charge of defining the Academy's training plan. The STC will be composed of one expert from each of the Academy's areas of action and will be open to Member Companies, which will be able to participate in the definition of the training plan itself. In addition, we have initiated-or are in the process of doing so-collaborations with the aforementioned FITSTIC, ITS Volpato, Ca' Foscari and Upskill 4.0, but also with Fondazione Sportsystem, the Treviso and Belluno Chamber of Commerce and ISRE.
In short, the most ambitious of the projects we are working on is to create a compact network that can give real answers to a territory that has always made dynamism its strong point.