The initiative driven by the Center for Engineering and Society Integration of the Faculty of Engineering seeks to transfer innovation processes and establish entrepreneurial competences in 10 small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in the Metropolitan Region. According to the dean of the Faculty, Juan Carlos Espinoza, this project is a great opportunity to build links with small companies.

With a thorough field work that will allow to collect data about the innovation potential of 18 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the Center for Engineering and Society Integration (CIIS, in Spanish) of the Faculty of Engineering of Universidad de Santiago started the Santiago 10i project, an initiative that has the goal of transferring innovation processes and establish entrepreneurial competences in manufacturing SMEs of the Metropolitan Region.

The project consists of a plan awarded by the Metropolitan Region Government to the Faculty of Engineering through the Innovation for Competitiveness Fund (FIC, in Spanish) that will be implemented over a year by the multidisciplinary CIIS’ team composed of engineers, designers and anthropologists.

The field work done during this first stage consists of conducting a survey in 18 pre-selected companies, through an instrument that seeks to have an in-depth analysis of 8 dimensions of the entrepreneurship and, in this way, to determine the innovation potential of each company. The results of the data collection will allow selecting the 10 companies that will, in the end, take part in the process to generate innovative, scalable products with a good performance in the market.

According to Juan Carlos Espinoza, dean of the Faculty of Engineering of Universidad de Santiago, the project is a great opportunity to build links between this academic unit and companies, because, in his opinion, “a University like ours should not only think of training professionals, but also of extending its academic work to be at the service of society. One way of doing it is supporting SMEs, which concentrate most of the jobs in our country.”

“This initiative led by the CIIS is part of the several efforts that the Faculty is making to add value to engineers through creativity, innovation and undertaking; therefore, as an academic unit, we feel committed to these efforts that strengthen our relation with the productive sector and benefit society altogether,” the dean added.

Meaningful innovation

The Santiago 10i project aims at transferring “Design Driven” innovation and establishing innovative entrepreneurial competences in 10 manufacturing companies in the Metropolitan Region, based on the Value- Added Network approach.

The work will be developed in five phases: companies’ selection and diagnosis, immersion in the Design-Driven Innovation process, generation of value propositions, development of innovative prototypes, and implementation of a new business model.

The project also included, at the beginning, the participation of the Italian academic Erik Ciravegna, Ph.D. in Industrial Design and Multimedia Communication of the Politecnico di Milano, who gave the presentation “Meaningful Innovation” by means of the Design Driven Innovation model.

In his presentation, he explained what the model was and how value can be added to business from design. According to the expert, the design allows to think in a different way to find solutions that are not the ones given by regular models that are already in the market.

“Design allows focusing in the users’ real requirements that are not only functional needs, but also symbolic, cultural and ritual ones, among others. Design is, indeed, a bridge between companies and users,” Ciravegna said.

Translated by Marcela Contreras