A new appointment to address the contents of the RUFA Master in Design Management.
This time, Master’s coordinator Francesca Gollo involved Alfredo Valeri, Head of Research and Innovation of Civita and RUFA lecturer of “Business management and crowdfunding”, and Angelo Rindone, founder of the crowdfunding platform “Produzioni dal Basso”, one of the Master’s Partners.
The following interview with our partner Angelo Didone, conducted by Alfredo Valeri, is particularly relevant as it focuses on the role and social impact of these platforms and possible future scenarios.
Alfredo Valeri: Crowdfunding, in particular its ‘reward’ component, has since its origins found an ideal environment of application in the creative sector. What concrete opportunities are offered to artists and creatives, even beyond the collection of money?
Angelo Rindone: Crowdfunding platforms are primarily created for fundraising, but they are also a showcase for a project and thus the place to promote an idea or project. For this reason, platforms have evolved to become true design tools that allow one to build a communication campaign, test a product through pre-sales marketing tools, measure the target audience or engage communities on one’s design.
In addition to the possibility of promoting a project and raising funds, crowdfunding is also becoming a tool used to launch calls for co-funding and Open Innovation. This, in particular, represents a valuable opportunity for designers and creatives to meet companies and turn ideas into products or concrete projects.
AV: Produzioni dal Basso, born between 2004 and 2005, is not only the first platform created in Italy, but represents a pioneering case at international level. Can you tell us what insights at the time encouraged you to experiment with this tool?
AR: The early years of the century represented an incubation period for the so-called Web 2.0.
It was a time when the first platforms that we know well today (such as Facebook and YouTube) were beginning to emerge, when smartphones, blogs, etc. became widespread. In short: a window of opportunity was opening for the world of self-production.
Within this framework and at this particular time, the idea of Produzioni dal Basso was born, which has its roots above all in the world of cultural production, with the idea of turning creative ideas into reality through community participation and the sharing of money.
AV: How have the functions of donation and reward platforms evolved over the years and which new players now populate the ecosystem of the so-called crowd-economy?
AR: As mentioned earlier, crowdfunding platforms are evolving from simple online fundraising showcases into design spaces, marketing and communication tools, environments where companies, municipalities and universities can build co-design and match-funding initiatives. All this obviously changes the ecosystem and functionality, but there is another element that I think could be interesting, which is the fact that the donation tools are now integrated within many applications that we use every day, such as social networks. In this sense we can say that crowdfunding is now an embedded tool, because the so-called ‘creator economy’ has generated a series of requirements that also involve elements of economic sustainability.
AV: How much weight do these campaigns have in the artistic, creative and design spheres?
AR: Especially in Italy, crowdfunding is mainly used for social and cultural projects, and very often even creating hybrids, i.e. initiatives of a socio- cultural nature.
Instead, it is used much less applied on design projects, particularly if we think of product projects or product prototypes. On this front, the most advanced country is certainly the USA, which with platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo has created real marketplaces for future goods. In Italy this phenomenon is very rare, although there are some interesting cases.
AV: To conclude, some scenario considerations… or rather, let’s reflect on the present with an eye to the near future: what prospects and opportunities emerge for designers from the application of AI in crowdfunding?
AR: We are in an experimental phase. With Produzioni dal Basso, we launched some tools to interweave project design and communication with generative artificial intelligence.
The results are encouraging, so much so that in the autumn we plan to launch a new application dedicated precisely to fully AI-assisted design.
Find out more on Produzioni dal Basso
