A laboratory of innovative ideas at the service of Palermo and the entire community
A virtual counter, but also a multidisciplinary laboratory, where you can find, experiment and develop the most innovative territorial ideas to improve the sports club activity through innovation. From the players and technical staff’s needs, to the fans’ experience and their dedicated services, facility development, social responsibility measures, youth soccer evolution and everything that revolves around the sporting life of Palermo, with an eye towards the brightest minds in the area, and the other towards international interlocutors of all kinds.
All this, and much more, is the new Palermo Innovation Lab which immediately makes its debut as a "listening center" for the territory and its creative energies. Every sports club, after all, constantly needs to meet new demands, but also to find new answers, technologically advanced and digital native, to long-standing needs. A new method to digitally track athletic performance during training, a new system to manage the stadium rows, training workshops to share interesting content with fans and start uppers, projects to make the use of bleachers greener: these are just some examples of ideas that could emerge from the new Innovation Lab, strongly oriented towards creative youngsters and already provided with important connections with high level interlocutors on the national and international scene.
In particular, there are five thematic areas of application of innovative ideas which Palermo Innovation Lab will take into consideration:
- Sport Tech & Data: programs for startups with a technological vocation.
- People & Experience: user-centered design projects to improve the people’s, and in particular, the fans’ experiences.
- Social Innovation & Environment: initiatives with social and environmental protection purposes for the city of Palermo and Sicily.
- Media & Digital: development of digital services and communication campaigns.
- Training & Events: training programs and other events related to the world of Palermo soccer.
On palermoinnovationlab.com, it is already possible for you to submit your idea for an initial team evaluation.
The new project will be led by two young experts who are already involved in tech sports and digital innovation projects: Roberto Ragonese (a former member of Wyscout, the world's leading soccer scouting platform, and now working with PMO co-working and Talent Players), Domenico Schillaci (co-founder and director of PUSH and included in the list of the best Italian under 35 innovators in 2016 by MIT Technology Review). Emanuela Perinetti Casoni (General Manager of Sport Dots, a marketing and sport tech agency, with experience at Samsung in Seoul, EY Italy and more) will coordinate the advisors and take care of the didactic part. They will be in charge of selecting and sifting through the most interesting ideas in order to evaluate possible development opportunities to be submitted, in case of validity, to the team, Palermo.
"We want to create a reference tool - says Roberto Ragonese - that can concretely help the development and growth of the most promising ideas. But at the same time, help Palermo to find new innovative assets to be, even off field, among the protagonists of Italian soccer. We will do this by involving startups and innovators, but also entrepreneurs and investors, not only locally".
"Since its launch - says Rinaldo Sagramola, CEO of Palermo - ours has always been much more than a purely soccer project, but more like a trend that wants to involve the whole community in the development of the entire territory. Players come and go, but working on the structure means leaving tools from which the club and the whole city can benefit, not only now, but also in the years to come. And Palermo Innovation Lab, as well as the sports center, the museum and the youth sector re-foundation, goes precisely towards this direction. If, as we believe, ideas and services, which are useful to our work, will emerge from the incitement of such listening center, we will immediately be ready to evaluate their application and eventually adopt them".