Forma Mentis InnovAction Award 2019
The Forma Mentis InnovAction Awards, a corporate social responsibility initiative is the one which every high school in Italy are seeking to get their top talent to be part of. All driven together by Forma Mentis’s passionate @LuigiSantapaga ensuring the competing students are equipped with job ready skills and competencies.
2019 competition was the biggest one to date presenting the students a real-life challenge to re-design a derelict park (Bosco di Rogoredo) in the outskirts of Milan. The teams with multidisciplinary skills and tasked with creating the realism of a start-up company were being trained on Autodesk software (Revit, Fusion 360, Generative Design), as well as; Visual Analytics, Intellectual Property, Teamwork and Presentation skills. A total of 49 students from 43 different schools took part to create a Smart Park 4.0 in co-operation with the municipality of Milan.
The winners were announced at an awards ceremony with more than 1,000 attendees in July 2019. The ceremony included team presentations, together with appearances from Pierfrancesco Maran (Councilor for Urban Planning of the Municipality of Milan), Gianluigi Ballarani (Entrepreneur) and Massimiliano Moruzzi (Future Expert and Member of the Autodesk Industry Manufacturing Future group in the United States).
The competition is supported by technology companies, local government as well as by partners e.g. including ourselves here at KnowledgePoint Connect.
Forma Mentis has built a together a text-book example of how industry and academia should and could be working together bridging the skills gap, opening opportunities for the young to entrepreneurism and innovation.
Forma Mentis’s winning template for success is expanding, the InnovAction Awards 2020 competition was launched with ambitious mission to reconstruct the ancient town of Amatrice, devastated by a powerful earthquake in August 2016. The initiative has already reached a huge list of supporters including a famous Italian singer Daniele Ronda who has written the song “Tremo – Insieme per Amatrice” to help collect funds to support Amatrice.