ADAPT Press Release

The story of an Italian brain hub       

Dear friends and readers,

We are pleased to announce that the call for admission to the next cycle Doctorate in Education of Persons and Labour Market, promoted by ADAPT and theUniversity of Bergamo has been published. You can access the Call, which provides 44 seats (28 with grant and 7 with contracts of high level training) through the following link . The deadline for submitting applications is June 30. We expect valuable young people, interested in labor market and Industrial Relations Law issues, and in innovative forms of research in collaboration with companies, labor market organizations and associations representing the world of work. We shall be grateful with everyone who help us to disseminate the call and remain at the entire disposition to potential financers with whom, from now on, we can start building a collaboration agreement for the next cycle.

The publication of such an important call, which demands great effort in financial terms as well as in projective and educational-training terms, is for us, an opportunity for consideration. It enables and forces us to evaluate the past 10 years in which we have been experimenting an innovative formula that has become consolidated. Our PhD is the first and, we also believe, the only example in Italy of “dual” mode high training, which has been strongly discussed but poorly implemented. We have contributed to the commitment requested by the founder of our school: to promote change through a new way of developing a University, committing to train people who can act and think “in a different way”, instead of just making theories about reforms and revolutions that are doomed to remain in books. We thank Marco Biagi for transmitting his passion in issues linked to work and Industrial Relations, as well as for providing a method we have tried to implement and develop in a way that is respectful and coherent to the initial idea. All this without getting stuck in the past, but adapting to economic and regulatory changes that have occurred during this time.

The results of this experiment speak for themselves. In just 10 years, this school has funded more than 250 scholarships and nearly 100 high training apprenticeships and research contracts, using research funds for more than 10 million euros. This financing has resulted in contracts and scholarships for our youngsters, thanks to fundraising initiatives in which not only our partners, but also several readers of Bolletino ADAPT, participated. We want to thank all of them. During the past years we have learned to work in an interdisciplinary way, facing the complex problems of the world of work with work teams characterized by critical thinking, international network and from every type of discipline (legal, economics, pedagogy, linguistics, management, psychology, demographics)  that provide real and sustainable answers towards change.

Considering the work done in the past ten years, we think we have contributed, at least within the scope of our possibilities, to build one of the important brain hubs that Enrico Moretti talks about in his report on The new geography of Labour, recently discussed in Trento during the last edition of the Economy Festival. We would also like to thank ADAPT’s graphic designers who have managed to represent ADAPT today with a simple image. ADAPT is an innovation and research hub on labour market and industrial relations issues that has attracted talent, innovators and developers from all over Italy (over 500 young persons if we also consider our Talent Factory and pots-PhD) and from other countries such as Iran, India, China, Russia, Japan, the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Cuba, Honduras, Morocco, South Africa, Congo, Ethiopia, Namibia, Austria, Spain and France.

In a historical phase in which the Labour Law and Industrial Relations have an increasingly marginal role in scientific thinking and every day practice, ADAPT and our school bring hope for those who still believe in the centrality work and the person in economic and productive processes. It strives to offer practical solutions for a cultural change that our country needs. Thinking about the first 10 years of experimenting (3 in Modena and 7 in Bergamo) with an innovative formula in ADAPT School, we believe we have made contributions to the creation of a modern infrastructure of projective ideas and, most importantly, to minds that think and are useful to read and lead the (new) great transformation of work as they have been educated in complete freedom. A method is used, even prior to executing professional skills. Our hub will be appreciated for that. Not for a pre-built idea, nor a pre-designed project, nor perfect youngsters, but for the development of an open platform for cooperation among diverse labour market and school actors. This result in young people discovering their vocation and in the real satisfaction of needs of those who have agreed to participate as main actors of our adventure (partners, companies, business associations, unions, staffing firms, research centres…), contributing to identify new projects, financing scholarships or experimenting in high level training modes, escaping the temptation to implement traineeships in series that do not create value or growth prospects for anyone.

These thoughts clearly express pride and satisfaction due to the hard work developed during these years, but they are not meant to be a moment of self-celebration, which would be neither useful nor productive, considering our clear numbers. These thoughts aim to be a testimony of an educational effort, that has included hard choices and, for some of us, personally painful and fairly paid by ourselves. A testimony that shows that being faithful to a moral effort and a project, yields results in the long term, particularly when working with intellectual honesty and a method that, despite errors made, we have been able to correct, transforming it into an growth opportunity to reach complete full maturity.

Emmanuele Massagli
Presidente ADAPT
@EMassagli

Michele Tiraboschi
Coordinador científico ADAPT
@Michele_ADAPT