«For us, innovation must first of all produce positive impacts on society. Innovation is done to improve things and solve problems, but it cannot fail to trigger changes for everyone. This is our point of view ». These are the words of Antonio Perdichizzi, founder of tree, the SME specialized in offering innovative business solutions to companies and startups. Founded in 2011 as a consulting firm, the company was recently acquired by Opinno, one of the market leaders operating from Silicon Valley. "Connecting tree and Italy to a broad and structured reality such as Opinno means continuing on this path of continuous growth, of accompaniment step by step, to help companies in our territories to innovate and change, preserving and enriching experience, knowledge and excellence Perdichizzi had declared after the announcement of the operation.
The tree school started in Catania
In recent years tree has distinguished itself in the open innovation panorama, activating paths with companies on issues such as education. The initiative tree school was launched precisely to train hundreds of young talents from the South on the skills most requested by the labor market. In collaboration with Experis, a ManpowerGroup brand, and UniCredit, the tree school started in June with courses for front-end developers and Data Scientists. The headquarters are in Catania, but it is all of Southern Italy that is interested in a training course that aims to bring out talents. "This is an experience that, also thanks to Opinno, we would really like to take around the world", explained Perdichizzi.
Hackathon, involvement and "open" innovation
Always following the best practices of open innovation, over the years tree has accumulated a deep experience in the field of hackathons and community engagement. Going to the bottom of challenges that would return a concrete impact to the territory. This was the case during the last edition of the Milan Digital Week, in May, when tree played the role of technical partner in a series of online meetings with students and young innovators. HACK for Goals involved leading companies such as Accenture, Cisco, Snam and BlackRock to create digital hackathons that brought together professionals and academics to imagine a more sustainable and equitable future, starting from some of the goals set by the UN for the 2030 Agenda.
During the lockdown, tree also collaborated with Cariplo Factory to organize a bootcamp in preparation for the #EUvsVirus appointment, the hackathon launched by the European Commission with the aim of gathering ideas and projects to combat the pandemic.
«Now we have to bring out all the synergies and we are bringing mutual best practices to the table - explained Perdichizzi -. Thanks to Opinno we extend the partnerships with Saleforce and AWS and with them we will continue to help Italian companies in the digital transformation path. Another interesting thing starts from an added value that Opinno has, namely its own network of innovation ambassadors, experts and professionals at an international level. We too are working on the construction of this expert council at the Italian level ».
Alessandro Di Stefano
