As we wish our readers season’s greetings and best wishes for the coming year, we reflect upon what has been an eventful and fulfilling year for the Bassetti Foundation and our collaborators. 2013 saw an appreciable expansion in international affairs for the Foundation, and the launch of several long term global projects.

Without doubt the largest of these international projects was born in February as the Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs officially celebrated the start of the Italian Year of culture in the USA. The Bassetti foundation was involved from the beginning, organizing and promoting an event in San Francisco in collaboration with the Consulate general and the Italian cultural Institute in San Fransisco.

The ‘Innovating With Beauty, artisanship, technology and design’ event took place in San Francisco and the Bay area between June 11th and 24th, the Foundation promoting a week of exhibitions, debate and comparison between the cutting edge models of Italian production and the technology of Silicon Valley towards a new economy of beauty.

Guests included Chris Anderson, author of Makers. The New Industrial Revolution, Dale Dougherty, Editor and Publisher of MAKE, and general manager of the Maker Media division of O’Reilly Media, Inc, Jonathan Knowles of Singularity University, Stefano Micelli, author of Futuro Artigiano and Giulio Ceppi of Total Tool to name just a few.

The US event was later followed up with a sister event in Italy entitled “Gli artigiani incontrano i makers”, a meeting between artisan companies, Makers, FabLab and various institutions. This was a first person account of the realities and needs of a sector of industrial society that represents the creative and transformative platform of Northern Italy.

A series of posts relating to the events can be found here.

Continuing the international flavour 2013 also saw the launch of the Virtual Institute for Responsible innovation (VIRI), a US National Science Foundation funded project. VIRI is housed by the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University and directed by long term friend of the Foundation David Guston.
Alongside the US National Academy of Engineering’s Center for Engineering, Ethics and Society and IEEE Spectrum Online, the Bassetti Foundation is a founding institutional affiliate.

The year also saw the announcement of the forthcoming launch of the new Journal of Responsible Innovation published through Taylor and Francis and Routledge. The Journal of Responsible Innovation will offer an opportunity to articulate, strengthen and critique perspectives about the role of responsibility in the research and development process. The journal will also provide a forum for discussions of ethical, social and governance issues that arise in a society that places a great emphasis on innovation.

The Bassetti Foundation has been fortunate enough to have been invited to join the Editorial Board and Jonathan Hankins has accepted the position. We are honoured to have this wonderful opportunity to participate in the development of a truly international academic journal.

On a related note, 2013 also saw the release of Richard Owen, John Bessant and Maggie Heintz’s book entitled ‘Responsible Innovation: Managing the Responsible Emergence of Science and Innovation in Society’.

Without a doubt an influential book, key aspects of Responsible Innovation are scrutinized, underpinned by current knowledge and using case studies / examples for illustration, concluding with a forward look that pulls together the various fields of understanding and knowledge to ask “How do we ensure the responsible emergence of innovation in democratic society?” The Foundation’s Jonathan Hankins has a piece in the book entitled Endnotes: Building Capacity for Responsible Innovation.

A large Italy based project that is currently well under way is entitled “Realizzare l’improbabile: artigianato, nuovo nome del lavoro”. The project involves a competition open to small and medium sized businesses in the Milan, Monza and Brianza area, with winners chosen to appear in a film that documents the new era of artisan working practices. The aim is to reconstruct the faces and voices of Lombardy’s artisan culture in film, and demonstrate how the ‘local’ can renew and express new creative forms of wealth and beauty in the 21st century.

The results will be for all to see later this year.

The foundation was also present at numerous conferences across the globe last year, the S.NET in Boston, the Brookings Institute in Washington DC, the SAGE in Worcester, and the “Rilanciare il Sistema Italia con l’Integrità nella Green Economy” conference , the concluding event of the Green Clean Market project held in Milan.

The Foundation also hosted various events such as the first “Manifesto Ibridi” round table and the work of the Foundation was presented by Francesco Samorè, Virginia Sanchini and Tommaso Correale Santacroce to the Philosophy students at the San Rafaele university in Milan.

The Bassetti Foundation was also honoured to receive the Gabriele Lanfredini Prize in the ‘Recognition of Cultural Formation’ section from the Artisan Union of Milan and the Milan Chamber of Commerce.

The above list is far from complete as a search of the website timeline demonstrates, but we hope gives an overview of the last year’s activity conducted in the name of the Bassetti Foundation.

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