Workshop Aesthetics of Work
Experience. This is the word from which it all starts. But what does it really mean?
One can experience in so many ways, in a relationship, at work, or even just by reading a book, but the real meaning of the word lies in the nature of the word itself, that is, in direct contact with reality.
Alexis Carrel, Nobel laureate in Medicine and Physiology in 1912, said, “Little observation and much reasoning lead to error; much observation and little reasoning lead to truth”.
Indeed, it is observation that is the first and true attempt at experience.
So does one need to have a strong spirit of observation to have an experience?
One would really have to get to the bottom of this question, but one thing is certain, true experience is when we are called to be ourselves, when we encounter reality, for what it is, when we begin to draw the path toward the unstoppable desire that moves us every day.
This is what the “Aesthetics of Work” workshop experience is based on, a key moment in JobsAcademy’s educational and training proposal, where the main purpose is to bring out the spirit of enterprise and entrepreneurship in each student.
Entrepreneurs of themselves
The workshop is a time where JAC talents get involved by working on a business case and developing an entrepreneurial project around it.
The theme this year was Digital Manufacturing, a very current topic that unites both those coming from a technical and business background.
During the workshop, students split into mixed groups and collaborate together to present a business idea in front of a panel of experts who validate the results.
Among the opportunities this moment can offer is definitely the spirit of collaboration that is created among the students in the groups. We do not know each other, or at least in some cases only by sight, but in the end we become a true team-work united by the achievement of a common goal.
Community spirit, but also a healthy spirit of competition, because in the end only one group is decreed as the “winner” by the jury.
We believe that the spirit of entrepreneurship is a key element in the human and professional growth of the talents who experience JAC, which is why the workshop is part of the fundamental process of becoming a self-entrepreneur.
Workshop: Inside the Experience
The “Aesthetics of Work” workshop was organized and divided into four days. During the first day, students began to “put their hands in the dough” and establish the foundation of their own business idea.
The next three days were held in agile mode, due to the national health emergency, but this did not at all undermine the students’ experience and their desire to get to work.
In recent months, the students, divided into groups, have increasingly developed their own entrepreneurial project on the theme of digital fabrication and innovation.
Supporting the groups are Coaches, in the role of “facilitators,” who accompany the students toward the achievement of their goals and direct them to the next stages of project development.
Coaches are people who monitor the daily experience of the students in the Foundation step by step, accompanying them toward their own personal and professional growth.
Coordinating the management of the workshop is the Alef Consulting firm, composed of a Team of professionals who daily help companies grow their businesses and pursue their business goals.
What makes a group successful?
Every group has to deal with a number of external factors that can influence the development of the business project they are involved in:
- The context: the socioeconomic moment in which one currently lives;
- The market: the characteristics of the sector where the business idea is positioned; who are the target audience for the idea? The competitors? The stakeholders?
- Novelties: that whole set of factors that cannot be controlled, but with which one must reckon and anticipate, in order not to be overwhelmed by change.
- Environment: understood as the set of all those factors that can positively or negatively influence the idea, and which cannot be directly controlled. Unlike novelty, the environment incorporates many more elements that can affect an enterprise or business idea. Specifically, the environment is divided into Macroenvironment and Microenvironment:
- The business macroenvironment is the set of external variables that influence the life of a business. It is the environmental context in which the enterprise operates. Here we find demographics, technology and technological innovations, politics, economics and society.
- The Microenvironment of the enterprise, on the other hand, is the set of variables that influence the life of the enterprise but over which control can be exercised. Falling within the sphere of the Microenvironment are: suppliers, market competition, business intermediaries and customers.
Unlike the marketplace, where the focus is on identifying the sector where the idea is positioned and defining a targeted strategy,in defining the Microenvironment, one determines which parties interact with the company and over which the company can exercise control, so that actions can be planned that can generate a competitive advantage..
Workshop: Team is the key
Once this set of factors has been reckoned with, an organization needs a united team moved by a common vision in order to function, and here’s the kicker.
A team is not only a group working together on a project, but it is first and foremost a collection of people, each with their own history, their own experiences, with their own skills, knowledge and passions.
Here then, the real secret that makes a team successful is really the person, I, you, the individual person makes the difference and can drastically change the balance of a group and thus the development of an entire project.
“If you are not there something valuable is missing and the group does not work”.
Very often in companies we focus so much on external factors losing sight of the most valuable asset that can make a difference, the person.
The workshop is an opportunity to be people first, get involved, be present and share your desires.
Tackling digital innovation with Massimo Moretti of Wasp
This year’s workshop theme is the development of an entrepreneurial idea in the field of Digital Manufacturing. The challenge was given by Massimo Moretti of Wasp, a leading 3D printing company that has made its vision of changing the world its strong point.
There were many questions that students asked Massimo, who in his life has not only experienced great successes, such as that of Wasp, but has also found himself facing many uncomfortable situations that have made him the person he is today.
What particularly moved the students’ curiosity was how one can get back up after a failure, whether business or personal.
For some it may be an easy process that lasts a few months, for others it may be a negative moment in one’s life that is difficult to overcome and that one drags on for years, but for Massimo failure does not exist, because in it is hidden the opportunity to grow and improve.
On this the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary comes to our aid; in fact, the verb to fail, which means to fail, hides a profound meaning.
First Attemt In Learning – The first attempt at learning.
You can learn, all right, even by failing.
A set of experiences that make a difference
Another topic discussed with Massimo Moretti refers to how crucial the team is in the development of a business idea. Skills are not enough, knowledge is not enough, if one is not moved by a common vision.
What Massimo wanted to convey to the students is based precisely on this: a team must be united by a common intent, there must be an attraction to something.
A community, a group, to be defined as such, needs many managers of themselves who feel involved, who espouse a vision, but most importantly, who reflect their own lived experiences on the organization.
It is the experiences of the individual, shared with others, that can open up deep reflections and give rise to small initiatives that can turn into big strategies.
Workshop: project steps
The goal of the first day of the workshop for each group was to develop the first steps of a business idea:
- Identifying the idea: this is the first step and perhaps the most complicated. It is not easy to choose an idea that is common to the whole group, in fact everyone is moved by his own visions and has to come to terms with those of all the other people around him.
- Mission: identify the mission and what values the idea is identified with. What are the values of the group? An idea is also and above all the child of the values of the people who make up the group;
- The name of the idea: a project needs a name, which makes it distinguishable and unique in the eyes of the market.
- Identifying the benefits: in this phase students had to identify what social and environmental benefits they wish to pursue with their project.
Subsequent phases were conducted remotely in agile mode, always with the active support of the coaches and industry professionals who “threw down the gauntlet”. During the months of development of the various projects, the students increasingly gave shape to their ideas until they turned them into real potential business projects.
Workshop: final presentation
The process of project development led the students to present their “start-ups” in front of a jury of professionals, entrepreneurs and consultants, who carefully evaluated each and every aspect of the projects and decreed the winner of the workshop, as well as awarded the most innovative and concrete business idea.
How did it go? Watch the video to find out.
The jury included Andrea Lombardini, Benito Ranucci, Lorenza Ticli, Andrea Mezzadri and Simone Branchi. All industry professionals with whom the students had the opportunity to compare and relate.
What are the next challenges that JAC will throw at the Talents?
The workshop is a formative moment that JAC focuses on every year, with the goal of bringing out in each student their spirit of enterprise.
Through this experience, each Talent is called upon to put himself or herself on the line and has the opportunity to experience work in a growth path that hides a larger horizon.
Watch the video of the event