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One of the preconditions for genuine sustainability is a heritage that is present anywhere and anytime in everyday life. We present PLUGGY, a Pluggable Social Platform for Heritage Awareness and Participation. PLUGGY will address the need of society to be actively involved in cultural heritage activities, not only as an observer but also as a creator and a major influencing factor. With PLUGGY, we aim to bridge this gap by providing the tools needed to allow users to share their local knowledge and everyday experience with others, together with the contribution of cultural institutions. Users will be able to build extensive networks around a common area of interest, connecting the past, the present and the future. It will be powered by its users and puts people's values, aspirations and needs first. Users of PLUGGY will be the providers of information about cultural heritage in the everyday and ordinary, real life. Through its social platform and by using its innovative curation tools, designed to solely focus on a niche area in social media, citizens will be able to act as skilled storytellers by creating fascinating personalised stories and share them through social networking with friends, associates and professionals. In this paper, we describe a structured formative and summative evaluative approach of PLUGGY’s core concepts and the results will be used to inform and improve its design.

This chapter focuses on a specific application of Theory of Change, mainly in light of its potential to visually model and communicate the underlying logic of a complex design and innovation project. In particular, the chapter examines how the visual representations of Theory of Change carried out within this project had contrasting purposes and, therefore, experimented with varied ways of displaying the key assumptions, activities, outputs, and outcomes of the project by operating on visual elements such as scale, texture, color, transparency, layers, patterns, grids, and modularity. Reflecting on insights from this case, the chapter presents some considerations on how Theory of Change can be used to visualize strategy.

This book offers insights into how the Theory of Change framework can be effectively employed in a wide range of social interventions. Presenting its potential to support strategy and strategic thinking, this book offers an entry point to understanding how Theory of Change can be applied beyond the typical domain of aid projects.

The chapter introduces the history and basic vocabulary of Theory of Change and a few common ways of conceptualizing it. Theory of Change was originally conceived as a graphical and conceptual framework for the articulation of actions and the evaluation of their effects. This framework is made easier to create using a shared structure and grammar that helps participants to engage with and read across different Theories of Change. The chapter emphasizes that, while there is a shared vocabulary, the common ‘palette’ does not determine the design of a Theory of Change and each element is used for different strategic and design purposes. After illustrating some core strategic thinking processes that can be beneficial while designing social interventions, the chapter discusses how Theory of Change can be used to support such processes. For instance, the flexibility of Theory of Change facilitates its use in planning, management, evaluation and scaling up/out.

PurposeThis paper explores how learning processes supported by intensive use of design can favour absorptive capacity in open innovation contexts characterised by the interaction of a high number of diverse stakeholders.Design/methodology/approachThe paper combines the insights from theory with the empirical evidence gathered by adopting a case study approach.FindingsFindings provide evidence about the role of design-based learning to facilitate intra- and inter-organisational knowledge flows and to sustain absorptive capacity through processes of recognition, internalisation and adoption.Research limitations/implicationsThe study integrates currently distinct research streams focussing on (1) design research, particularly on how design can support knowledge processes and specific learning processes and (2) open innovation, particularly regarding how to enhance absorptive capacity in those contexts in which a high number of diverse stakeholders interact.Practical implicationsThis study can help companies, research institutions and other organisations leveraging open innovation to reflect on the potential of design-based learning processes and on how to deliberately facilitate such processes in their projects.Originality/valueThe original contribution provided by this study is to explore open innovation through some analytical categories elaborated in design research concerning materially grounded forms of design-based learning. In particular, the study investigates how design supports knowledge transfer, sharing, translation and creation.

This paper investigates the role of design as a knowledge translation mechanism for social creativity in technology-intensive enterprises' open innovation practices of. The focus is on how design can be used to connect and combine the contribution of creativity resulting from multiple stakeholders, including entrepreneurs, university students and academics in a process in which knowledge is openly shared and transferred across the boundaries of companies' R&D Laboratories, a university and other institutions. Adopting the research approach of grounded theory, the empirical investigation of an initiative in technology-intensive enterprises, developed from 2009 to 2016 by the Italian Conference of the University Colleges and the Italian Association of Young Entrepreneurs, is presented. The aim is to provide evidence that design artefacts represent important managerial means to support the translation of stakeholders' creativity and knowledge into new formats to nurture open innovation. This provides relevant implications for theory building and practice.

This paper proposes arts and design as translational mechanisms to connect and align stakeholders, particularly in the context of academic entrepreneurship where multiple stakeholders with different expertise and interests work together in joint endeavors. Insights gathered from an ethnographic investigation carried out at metaLAB - an academic laboratory located at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, USA) - build the empirical foundation. Findings show that various forms of arts and design (including poetry, photography, art installations, motion graphics videos, data visualization) play an important role in connecting metaLAB to external stakeholders and in activating multiple value drivers. The adoption of arts- and design-based initiatives allows the translation of different needs and wants of stakeholders into shared meanings, but also supports emotional and cognitive engagement and creative and divergent viewpoints. This paper contributes to existing studies focusing on how arts-based initiatives can support organizations in exploiting their potential for organizational value creation.

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the role of design as a knowledge translation mechanism in R&D-oriented open innovation. In particular, the paper intends to look at how design can be used as a means of knowledge transfer among various stakeholders who speak different languages and have divergent needs and interests in a process where knowledge openly flew across the boundaries of a high number of organizations. Design/methodology/approach The paper combines the insights from theory with the empirical evidences gathered by adopting an extreme case study approach: the detailed analysis of a case study related to an R&D project funded by the European Commission and aimed to investigate and produce innovative serious games in the area of healthcare. The project gathered a large number of stakeholders and deliberately adopted design to support an open innovation approach. Findings The paper provides insights into the use of design outputs such as artifacts, sketches, visual representations or prototypes to translate ideas, theoretical and technical requirements, documents and outputs into formats that can be more easily understood and appreciated by various stakeholders. This supports and favors coordination in open innovation projects where many different stakeholders are engaged in. Research limitations/implications Although the adoption of an extreme case study approach offers important implications to understand the role of design in R&D-oriented open innovation, the use of a single case study represents the basis both to explore hypothesis and to provide first evidences that need to be further tested with other qualitative and quantitative analysis. Practical implications The paper offers practical implications about how design can help individuals and organizations involved in R&D activities to better communicate and share knowledge among various stakeholders by aligning their different needs, interests and languages along the various phases of their project development. Originality/value The originality of the paper lays at the intersection of three different fields: open innovation, knowledge management and design for innovation, thus integrating mature, but so far isolated, research streams. It provides insights for theory building by explaining the use of design as knowledge translational mechanism as well as it informs the practice by highlighting the power of design as a mean to support knowledge flows into open innovation-based R&D projects.

Recent research calls for greater consideration of design, by considering it further from the perspective of technology innovation management. In the attempt to cover this gap, the paper intends to explore how design can be used to support translational processes that connect and align different stakeholders in academic entrepreneurship. Insights from the investigation of the processes adopted by Senseable City Lab – an academic lab at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA) – will demonstrate how various design artefacts – sketches, visualizations, prototypes – are used to support several semiotic translations aimed at multiple stakeholders. Findings will show that design can play a relevant role in fostering entrepreneurial activities and value creation in academia, by supporting the translation of the different needs and interests of stakeholders into a shared meaning that allows a coordinated way of working. The conceptualization of design as a form of translation allows bridging currently distinct research strands in design and entrepreneurship.

A new organometallic ruthenium complex, named AziRu, along with three amphiphilic nucleoside-based ruthenium complexes, ToThyRu, HoThyRu and DoHuRu, incorporating AziRu in their skeleton, have been synthesized, stabilized in POPC phospholipid formulations and studied for their antineoplastic activity. Self-aggregation behavior of these complexes was investigated, showing that the three synthesized AziRu derivatives able to form liposomes and, under specific conditions, elongated micelles. The formulations prepared in POPC proved to be stable for months and showed high in vitro antiproliferative activity. The here described results open new scenarios in the design of innovative transition metal-based supramolecular systems for anticancer drugs vectorization.

The chemical synthesis and 1H NMR analysis of a novel bicyclic uridine derivative, with a 18-crown-6 ether moiety fused at the ribose 2- and 3-positions, as first example of a hitherto unknown class of ribose-modified nucleosides, are here described. NMR-based conformational analysis studies showed for the modified nucleoside a marked preference for an N-type sugar puckering and the nucleobase in the anti conformation, with the uracil favouring the coordination of a sodium ion hosted in the crown ether.

The use of Boc as a nucleobase-protecting group in the synthesis of sugar-modified thymidine analogs is reported. Boc was easily inserted at N(3) by a simple and high-yielding reaction and found to be stable to standard treatments for the removal of Ac and (t) BuMe(2) Si (TBDMS) groups, as well as to ZnBr(2) -mediated 4,4'-dimethoxytrityl (DMTr) deprotection. Boc Protection proved to be completely resistant to the strong basic conditions required to regioselectively achieve O-alkylation, therefore, providing synthetic access to a variety of sugar-alkylated nucleoside analogs. To demonstrate the feasibility of this approach, two 3'-O-alkylated thymidine analogs have been synthesized in high overall yields and fully characterized.

A novel ruthenium complex, linked to a cholesterol-containing nucleolipid (named ToThyCholRu), stabilized by lipid aggregates for antineoplastic therapy is presented. In order to retard the degradation kinetics typically observed for several ruthenium-based antineoplastic agents, ToThyCholRu is incorporated into a liposome bilayer formed by POPC. The resulting nanoaggregates contain up to 15% in moles of the ruthenium complex, and are shown to be stable for several weeks. The liposomes host the ruthenium–nucleolipid complex with the metal ion surrounded by POPC lipid headgroups and the steroid moiety inserted in the more external acyl chain region. These ruthenium-containing liposomes are more effective in inhibiting the growth of cancer cells than a model NAMI-A-like ruthenium complex, prepared for a direct evaluation of their anti-proliferative activity. These results introduce new perspectives in the design of innovative transition-metal-based supramolecular systems for anticancer drug vectorization.