STAO stands for Institute for Economic and Business Studies Adriano Olivetti. Founded in 1967 by Giorgio Fuà. Economist, he worked with the “visionary and social” entrepreneur Adriano Olivetti sharing the same wide social perspective of economic studies. The Institute acts as an education and research community whereas teachers, students and stakeholders (firms, public and private agencies) interact for the regional community development.

The issues of innovation and new methodological training and the community involvement are two fundamental assets of ISTAO pursued since its foundation. Tenacity has been promptly seen as a unique project for learning and comparing international formats and ideas.

One strong motivation is the opportunity to study and learn more about the state of the art in deliberative learning and the lever of openness of education towards democratic formats in contemporary academic spaces, at national and international level. 

One first achievement is to acquire a deeper knowledge of the limits and the possibilities for involving academies and their faculties in concrete and feasible actions in the Third Mission framework and promoting and developing them in our region. 

A second one is the access to a network of international partners doing research and execution on the topics.

Personally I appreciated the strong attention put by the Project on the practical sessions to build on with academic partners and stakeholder. It has resulted of particular interest the focus group organized by ISTAO with the academic faculty of Polytechnic University of Marche where a fruitful debate on the limits and opportunities of deliberative approach education arose out.

This focus was followed and participated with interest by younger and elder academic teachers: they all conveyed on the need of implementing new teaching approaches in the mission of the university responsiveness taking care of the community interests.

The focus group proved to be a powerful tool of lateral thinking, problem solving analysis, inspirational and creativity tool for participative decision making processes.

Istao has initiated to promote the Handbook results among the academic partners of its organisation. Specifically, ISTAO has proposed the Polytechnical University to keep on the focus group experience by formalizing a “deliberative” table in the Economic Department with monthly meetings in order to going deeper the issues debated.

ISTAO promoted the Handbook results in occasion of the Yearly Orienteering Session at Macerata University (public Round Table) by supporting the proposal of an experimental session of deliberative arenas in one course.