Implementing the Open-Agri project in Milan: get an update on the activities carried out in the second UIA expert journal

Open Innovation Hub on Peri-Urban Agriculture (Open-Agri) integrates several food policy experiments in a single strategy and operating as a living lab to foster innovation in the entrepreneurial, social, sustainable and technological dimensions of the agri-food sector. This 2nd Journal outlines the project’s progress during the last semester and reflects upon the main challenges faced and analyse how they have been dealt with.

This Journal draws some lessons from the project implementation and notably looks at three main areas of the project:
• “Integration as a strategy, not as a challenge” which addresses how the OpenAgri project is integrated within the municipal strategy called “Innovate for including” that frames the huge amount of experimental initiatives which have been promoted in recent years in the field of labour and innovation policy.
•  “Innovativeness of OpenAgri” sketches the capacity of OpenAgri to attract talents, creators, entrepreneurs, business and others, in a unique experimentation laboratory that follows a place-based approach.
•  “#MilanoUpsideDown” as the project’s communication strategy, which is based on the assumption that OpenAgri needs a permanent and inclusive approach to avoid irrelevance and the top down feeling.