Technology for Social Innovation

TeSI Summer School is an intensive 10 ECTS course in which students apply human-centred design methods to identify disruptive applications for cutting-edge technologies. The techologies have all been developed under the ATTRACT EU initiative with the overall objective of solving social needs. We will explore the human, technological, financial and social aspects of creating organsiations that can deliver these innovations to the world sustainably. Across 4 weeks at ESADE FusionPoint Barcelona, FabLab Sant Cugat (Barcelona) and CERN IdeaSquare in Geneva (Switzerland), the diverse, multidisciplinary teams will learn the principles and practices of Design Thinking, Human-centred Innovation, Digital Fabrication and Technology Transfer through practical workshops and close coaching from experts from across Europe. The program aims to attract students with a range of educational and social backgrounds. This is important in order to offer a richer learning experience for alumni but also to improve the quality of design and innovation outcomes, which are correlated with the diversity of life experience and voices within the team. The goal of ATTRACT is to establish a systematic framework to transform breakthrough technologies developed for fundamental research purposes into breakthrough innovations that can be turned into sound industrial applications and provide value for society. Student teams will work for 4 weeks on projects following a user-centred design process (Design Thinking and Lean Start-up). The student teams first identify a specific social innovation challenge they will work on, for which the chosen technology could be a potential solution. For the development of the solution, the teams receive support from the coaching team and have touch points with the scientists of the involved research centres. The teams will develop a new solution concept and present a proof-of-concept prototype and a business or nonbusiness organisation model.