The “Tour of the Thousand” initiative by Telecom Italia and PNICube is coming to Milan on Monday 17 October to support the talents of Italian innovation and promote the creation of start-ups over 2011, seeking the thousand most innovative projects promoted by young university students and aspiring entrepreneurs.
During the event, to be held at 5.30 p.m. at the Bocconi University (Aula Magna, Via Gobbi, 5), 10 young people will present their ideas in the Internet, Web & ICT and Social Innovation sectors. At the end of the meeting, four prizes worth 30,000 Euro each will be assigned to the best project selected by the jury of experts and the blogsphere, which can follow the event in a streaming broadcast on www.workingcapital.telecomitalia.it and vote for the most interesting initiative on the Working Capital Facebook page.
Riccardo Luna (journalist and founder of Wired Italia) and Gianluca Dettori (founder of dPixel) will conduct the event, moderating the interventions by the guests representing the world of business, research, civil society and culture in Milan and Lombardy in general, who will provide significant aspects of their views on innovation, the highlighting of talent and the capacity of the national system to provide adequate stimuli to enhance a new concept of enterprise, with special reference to the situation in Lombardy.
At the event, Marco Patuano, Telecom Italia CEO will intervene by video, and other participants include Severino Salvemini (Chairman of Telecom Italia Media, Professor of Corporate Organisation at the Bocconi University), Alvise Biffi (President of Giovani Imprenditori Assolombarda), Stefano Quintarelli (Blogger, founder of I.Net), Selene Biffi (Founder of Youth Action for Change), Linnea Passaler (founder of pazienti.org), Marco De Rossi (founder of Oilproject), Francesco Sacco (Managing Director of the EntER Research Centre, Bocconi University), Ferdinando Pennarola (Department of Management and Technology, Bocconi University); Marco Zamperini (blogger).
Working Capital is the project launched by Telecom Italia in 2009 in order to support web-based youth enterprise. Over 10,000 aspiring entrepreneurs responded with over 2,000 project proposals, with 13 start-ups supported, 30 research projects funded and 36 pre-incubation projects. The “Tour of the Thousand” is the title of the 2011 special edition dedicated to the 150th anniversary of Italian Unification, travelling over the country since last March to discover new heroes who, armed with enterprising ideas in the areas of Web 2.0, Social Innovation, Green and Bio-nanotech, met the challenge stage after stage until the final victory is celebrated in Turin next November. PNICube – National Innovation Prize, the Comitato Italia 150 – Esperienza Italia, the Piedmont Region, Wired and Quantica are collaborating with Telecom Italia in this special edition of Working Capital. Candidates for free participation in the business competition can register on the website www.workingcapital.telecomitalia.it containing all the information on the initiative.
The Tour of the Thousand has stopped in Turin, Palermo, Naples, Florence, Trieste and after Milan, will go back to Turin with a 3-day event from 18 November 2011.
Milan, 14 October 2011
