One Page Summary

The challenge definition
The challenge that we propose to address is the following: Reggio Emilia is a municipality that has a strong vocation for internationalization as well as local stakeholders. For this reason we want to enforce the connection to the territory of foreign students who come to study in the schools of Reggio Emilia, and on the other hand we want to strengthen the city attraction towards foreign talents.

The solution proposed 

Our proposal is based on the implementation of a web platform that allows the construction of a virtual communities where it will be possible to share ideas and proposals. More precisely enterprises will be able to publish requests and business opportunity; students/researchers/professionals will share ideas and projects they want to develop but they can’t because they do not have the resources in order to create added value in terms of innovative skills and link to opportunities.

In order to attract and retain foreign students and professionals, it is necessary in the first instance to take care about their connections with the social fabric and subsequently connect them to the business fabric.
For this reason, the web platform will try to create collaborative relationships between people around the ideas that these people will propose.
The stakeholders of Reggio Emilia will be able to support and invest on the best ideas, eventually leading them to the construction of business projects in which the communities will be involved.
The platform will also allow the opposite process: the stakeholders will be able to publish their needs on the platform. In this way we could facilitate the relationship and foster the connections to potential partners/investors.
To encourage the user engagement, a reward system will be provided and linked to the activities that the users will carry out on the web platform. More activites are carried out and more points will be received: these engagement points can be used to participate at exclusive events organized by the Reggio Emilia Municipality, or to obtain special discounts on cultural and recreational activities.
In this way we are able to
• reinforce the commitment on the platform by foreign users
• reinforce the foreign users link with the city and the territory.

The Implications

The main goal of the project is to attract and retain students, researchers and professionals in Reggio Emilia Municipality area. 

In order to reach this goal, is very important try to enhance the many opportunities that our territory can make available to these subjects.
A city with a greater international component is an opportunity for everyone: businesses can only gain advantages from having different skills and people who can facilitate access to new foreign markets.
The foreigners who will come to our territory will be put in touch with opportunities otherwise difficult to reach. This mutual exchange will foster economic, scientific and environmental growth in the city.

The Actors 
The main actors of the platform are those around communities are built: foreign students and foreign professional figures.
On the other hand, the platform will also host stakeholders who will have the task of following the best ideas trying to turn them into projects in order to obtain a positive impact on the community of Reggio Emilia.
Among the stakeholders we need to obtain a strong commitment from:
• Reggio Emilia University
• Business associations (Confindustria, CNA, UPI, Legacoop)
• Municipality of Reggio Emilia as the case study municipality for the consultancy work
• Reggio Emilia Research center (like Reggio Children)
• Cooperatives
Other actors will be those who will be responsible for community social management (social experts) and for the organization of all the events and the activities used to reward users and the most active communities.
These users will also take care of the dissemination part: using social platforms as a “sounding board” in order to improve community numbers.

Strenghts and weakness
There are various solutions on the market that aim to connect people. If the goal is to convince foreign students to remain, the social aspect cannot be ignored. The strength of this solution is to create social relationships around potentially innovative ideas that can find their realization in projects sponsored by stakeholders.
A potential weakness of such platforms is the possibility of remain unpopulated and therefore useless.
For this reason we intend to create a strong commitment around the platform by the stakeholders and also build a cross-community of social experts that will take care of activate ad foster all the users engagement initiatives. In addition to this, a reward system will be implemented for all the platform participants: in this way, we try to strengthen their relationship with the city from a social point of view and at the same time encourage them to participate with their own ideas.