Fabrizio and Piergiorgio, Very Open to New Working Spaces

1,000 square meters where things happen. This is an extreme summary of Open, the civic space created for Milan (which will be inaugurated on 20 November), created by four people, two Bocconi alumni, Fabrizio Cosi and Piergiorgio Mancone, along with Carla Parisi and especially Giorgio Fipaldini, the heart and soul behind the project. They are four friends who met indirectly and decided to share an idea: "create a place for the city," explains Fabrizio, "which acts as an aggregator and creator of contamination."

More concretely, it's a bookshop with 8,000 hardcopy volumes, which is part reading room, thanks to 800 seats (chairs, couches, a 20-meter-long table), and part digital bookshop, thanks to the chance to browse content on 100 tablets and e-readers. But it's also a co-working space (there are 40 dedicated workspaces) and part meeting area, with three meeting rooms with between 6 and 50 seats to share projects large and small. There is also an open area for events and courses and a bar for drinks.

"We want to transform a physical space into a place for the production of ideas, thanks to an aggregation of different people and activities," explains Fabrizio Cosi, a graduate of the SDA Bocconi Executive MBA, a Board Member for sports at the Bocconi Alumni Association and President of the non-profit association Podisti da Marte (specialized in civic education and social projects, it was nominated for the upcoming Civiche Benemerenze del Comune di Milano). "In the end," he continues, "books aren't the only important part of a bookshop, but what they can make happen."

Through aggregation and contamination of various activities and people, new ideas are created, alternative solutions are developed, and networks in the most productive sense of the term can be established. This is where the idea for 20-meter-long tables comes from, to incentivize people to interact, and co-working areas. With today's networking 2.0, part of the project is being supported through a €30,000 crowdfunding campaign.

"The four of us founded Open, but it's an open company," explains Piergiorgio Mancone, a graduate from the Law program at Bocconi and an Executive Master in Corporate Finance & Banking at SDA Bocconi. "As a result, a group of shareholders is united around us, with a specific vision: that the focus of this initiative shouldn't be return on investment, it is that too, but rather the chance to develop innovation."