Design and Innovation for Made in Italy

In January 2023, one of the most ambitious research challenges to advance innovation within the Made in Italy production system began. Within a large interdisciplinary research partnership known as MICS (Made in Italy Circolare e Sostenibile), universities, research centres and companies funded by the Min-istry of University and Research through resources provided by the European Union under the NextGenerationEU programme (PNRR) were able to collabo-rate for three years on shared projects.These projects were grounded in bodies of knowledge and disciplinary domains that do not usually interact –engineer-ing, chemistry, economics, marketing, as well as social and natural sciences.MICS is composed of 25 partners, including 12 public institutions and 13 indus-trial partners operating in three key sectors of the Italian industrial landscape, namely Clothing and Textiles, Furniture and Wood, Automation and Mechanics. Within the project activities carried out by the partnership, research groups belonging to the CEAR/08-D Design disciplinary area have led and collaborated on multiple projects with the aim of integrating the cultural, scientific and tech-nical knowledge of the design discipline.