Dall’uso produttivo delle risorse naturali alla valorizzazione del territorio: un’esperienza didattica di design strategico in Cile.

The current phase of the economic and social growth of Chile is accompanied by a gradual rediscovery of the value and specificity of some of its resources, including the landscape, local production, and cultural heritage. This stage still lacks a systematic vision and an overall plan of valorisation to generate a positive impact on the whole territory and in the various economic sectors. In this long path of growth which has not yet been accomplished, there is a clear need to support the economic development of the country with a strategic vision that does not irrevocably consume the existing natural resources and can show foresight in envisioning qualitative as well as competitive development scenarios. Chile has decided to invest in specialist training, setting up partnerships with foreign universities in order to research the economic development with a generation of young people prepared to confront themselves on a local and global scale. The collaboration with the School of Design and the Poli.design Consortium of the Politecnico di Milano, launched about a decade ago, was born with the perspective of investing in specialized strategic design training. This collaboration took form through the following steps, the last two of which are still in progress: - Specialized training of Chilean professionals and researchers in Italy. - Creation of an on-site training program. - Collaboration between Italian and Chilean professors. - Development, during the training, of pilot schemes with some local companies for the definition of the design scenarios and strategic replacement. The "Magister en Diseño Estratégico" of the Universidad de Valparaiso, currently in its sixth cycle, was born from this very collaboration. The program adapts the training model already tested in Italy with the "Master in Strategic Design" by Poli.design to the local context. This paper aims to provide a snapshot of the competitive positioning of Chile and retrace the main aspects of the collaboration with the Politecnico di Milano, as well as to present a recent learning experience that features new reflections on the relationship between businesses, communities and territories. The reference company was "Natural Response", specialized in the production and processing of quillay, a natural extract from the bark of an endemic Chilean tree, named quillaja soapwort. It is used as a foaming agent in a variety of areas ranging from beverages and cosmetics to the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries. The design scenarios, developed by the working groups, interpret the themes of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as an opportunity to re-establish relations of trust with the local communities and recover forgotten or overlooked elements of the environmental and cultural system in Chile. The final goal is the creation of an environmentally sustainable habitat, rich in cultural values and also attractive to other economies, such as tourism.