Fashionplus: how to establish productive connections among design, enterprise, territory

Fashionplus aims at showing how creativity can become a triggering factor to establish social and economic connections inside a productive territory, that is to say by intervening on the actors of the project (i.e. designers) and on small/medium local enterprises. The project has developed a knowledge production network among the actors of the local productive system in the area of Carpi, thanks to innovation processes based on actual relationships between designers and enterprises. This has allowed the development of a model of technological transfer repeatable also in other productive territories: it does put in touch the actors of a territory - that is to say enterprises, local authorities and institutions - and the design system of skills, that is to say their creativity understood as strategic lever for competitiveness. The project has shown that design can actually enable a systemic dimension of innovation involving both enterprises and their whole offer system; this has been realized through specific experimental projects, which help and trigger the growth of global skills among the actors of the territory itself. The influence of design can actually support connection processes inside a local productive system: in this sense, Fashionplus has allowed to experiment with a model of knowledge-transfer based on the actual presence of designers inside enterprises and to trigger a dynamic of synergic growth of skills and expertise inside them.