THE AVIO AERO

PEOPLE’S MAGAZINE

Italy, a land of excellence. This is an indisputable fact. Just think of the incredible artistic, literary or architectural heritage of which we are all proud. And we cannot either forget reference to technology and innovation, areas where Italians have been pioneers since the dawn of the history, evident still today in the great engineering works from the Romans, Galileo Galilei's discoveries or Leonardo da Vinci's masterpieces.

For this reason, as well as to promote and celebrate Italian scientific genius, supporting research along its virtuous path, "Made in Italy" was the focus of an entire week in Turin, thanks to the first edition of Italian Tech Week, in which Avio Aero participated running two different initiatives.

The first one included an exhibit booth and round tables about topics concerning the aeronautical world during Techshare Day 2019. The second was a conference held by Barbara Preti, Avio Aero HR Leader and President of the Stem by Women association of companies, where results of the surveys based on the relationship between women and STEM have been shared.

More than 300 inventors from 30 universities and Italian research centers took part in the "Techshare Day 2019", where they showcased 140 inventions and prototypes developed and patented within national universities and research centers. The main purpose of Techshare Day, which included two simultaneous initiatives during the event at the Polytechnic of Turin and University of Turin, was to grant visibility for technology exchange activities.

Inventors showed off their technologies and met directly with companies and investors to discuss the benefits and areas of application for their own inventions. In parallel with the exhibition, 6 round tables were set up for the Corporations’ world, involving up to 27 large companies in addition to Avio Aero (such as, for example, FCA, GM, Leonardo, Edison, Eni, Iren, Menarini, Eataly, Ferrero, Lavazza, etc.). These companies discussed their own experiences with Open Innovation and explained how this model was addressed and integrated into their industrial strategies while telling their success stories.

During the aerospace round table, Luca Bedon, Engineering Technologies Leader at Avio Aero, said that "innovation means rethinking our products and use technologies that will allow us to continue to be successful on the market." In this perspective, for the past twenty years the GE Aviation company has chosen a model of open innovation based on collaboration with major Italian universities and research centers.

"Innovation means rethinking our products and using the technologies that will allow us to continue to be successful on the market"

Furthermore, over the past two years, the "Tech Community" model has been progressing to further increase cross-over work on topics of innovation, such as additive manufacturing where Avio Aero is pioneer. "The Turin Additive Lab was founded at Politecnico Campus: here together with young students we consider new materials and components, and develop machines for the next generation of products," said Bedon.

Aerospace and innovation have always gone hand in hand, and they are even closer today given the estimates that by 2035 civil air traffic will double, with an annual growth rate of 6%. All this means that the business model will need to adapt quickly to new challenges focusing on understanding the new customer. As David Avino of Argotec also stated: "Increasingly, innovation will have to follow the pace of social change to understand people and their new needs."

Innovation is even a global challenge. It involves the entire technology industry that must be prepared for a continuous process of transformation and reinterpretation. Innovation also means helping your country and stimulating new generations with increasingly open and creative minds. But the most complex scientific challenge of our time is to imagine and predict the future to stay abreast with scientific and social change which are proceeding at a very rapid pace.

Speaking of predictions, not even the infinite imagination of world-famous scriptwriters like Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, with their cult movie "Back to the Future", managed to hit the target on all the scientific revolutions that would become reality by the year 2000. Indeed, only three quarters of all the technologies mentioned in the legendary film from the ‘80s have come to pass. Yet among the virtual reality, ultra-flat screens and video calls, two technological revolutions that have forever changed the modern world are missing... the Internet and big data.

This is why events like Italian Tech Week represent an opportunity for companies and young people alike. New revolutionary ideas can be dusted off and become concrete solutions to really try to predict the future.

_{^{Credits and sources PoliFlash magazine.}}