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G. Sonetti and P. Lombardi
1 Introduction
Today’s global society faces pressing, complex challenges across many domains
—including health, environment, and social justice (EC 2010; Leach et al. 2010;
Wolch et al. 2014). Science (including social sciences), technology, the arts, and
humanities have critical roles to play in addressing these challenges and building a
positive and wealthy future. Universities are nuclei for breaking through, structuring
new awareness, and varying our vision of the world (Ferrer-Balas et al. 2009; Lozano
et al. 2015; Segalas et al. 2010). The role of universities in education is of public value;
also, universities are often promoters of new businesses led by new values, in being
spots for nurturing the ground science that leads to new products, or in producing
evidence on which policy decisions should be made (Corbett 2005; Disterheft et al.
2014). By coming together as universities, collaborating with partners, and aiming
for ambitious goals to address problems that might seem unsolvable, universities
can show commitment to their communities and become inspirations for change
(Ferrer-Balas et al. 2010; Lozano et al. 2014; Sonetti et al. 2016).
Mission-oriented policies can be defined as systemic public policies that relies on
frontier knowledge to reach specific results (Mazzucato and Penna 2015). Missions
provide a visible goal, a key, and a key to address the challenges that people face
in their daily lives, whether that concerns air pollution, health and wellbeing in
urban context of for the ageing societies, equal access to education and technologies
enabling public services and fair trade (Edquist and Zabala-Iturriagagoitia 2012). To
engage research and innovation in meeting such challenges, a clear direction must
be given, while also enabling bottom-up solutions. The debate involves a wide array
of stakeholders, and it is led by wider and over-national aims. The 17 Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs), articulated in 169 Targets to be reached by 2030, were
born to respond to this need (Flückiger and Seth 2016).
The SDGs constitute a big occasion for University to restructure its strategy and
bring up-to-date the education system to respond to the current societal challenges
(Leal Filho et al. 2018). Given the size of the task and the critical role universities
have in supporting, researching and delivering on them, there is an urgent need
for the educational sector to accelerate insights on the SDGs complementarity and
prioritization (Hartz-Karp and Marinova 2017). However, this transition toward a
mission-based university is still difficult, since departments and administrative unites
operate in silos and the leader’s agenda does not allow a real flexible and adaptable
model to feed in (Klein 2015; König et al. 2013; Tejedor et al. 2018). Researchers and
administrators also lack tools to identify which interactions are the most important to
tackle, and evidence to show how particular interventions and policies help or hinder
progress towards the goals (Ferrer-Balas et al. 2010; Meadowcroft 2009; Parris and
Kates 2003). Indeed, “missional motivation” has been regarded as one of the factors
triggering the co-creation of sustainability, forming multi-actor partnerships and
implementing solutions for localised issues (Yarime et al. 2012).
This contribution highlights the match between the current sustainability strategy at the Politecnico di Torino (PoliTO) and the SDGs, introducing the national
G. Sonetti and P. Lombardi
1 Introduction
Today’s global society faces pressing, complex challenges across many domains
—including health, environment, and social justice (EC 2010; Leach et al. 2010;
Wolch et al. 2014). Science (including social sciences), technology, the arts, and
humanities have critical roles to play in addressing these challenges and building a
positive and wealthy future. Universities are nuclei for breaking through, structuring
new awareness, and varying our vision of the world (Ferrer-Balas et al. 2009; Lozano
et al. 2015; Segalas et al. 2010). The role of universities in education is of public value;
also, universities are often promoters of new businesses led by new values, in being
spots for nurturing the ground science that leads to new products, or in producing
evidence on which policy decisions should be made (Corbett 2005; Disterheft et al.
2014). By coming together as universities, collaborating with partners, and aiming
for ambitious goals to address problems that might seem unsolvable, universities
can show commitment to their communities and become inspirations for change
(Ferrer-Balas et al. 2010; Lozano et al. 2014; Sonetti et al. 2016).
Mission-oriented policies can be defined as systemic public policies that relies on
frontier knowledge to reach specific results (Mazzucato and Penna 2015). Missions
provide a visible goal, a key, and a key to address the challenges that people face
in their daily lives, whether that concerns air pollution, health and wellbeing in
urban context of for the ageing societies, equal access to education and technologies
enabling public services and fair trade (Edquist and Zabala-Iturriagagoitia 2012). To
engage research and innovation in meeting such challenges, a clear direction must
be given, while also enabling bottom-up solutions. The debate involves a wide array
of stakeholders, and it is led by wider and over-national aims. The 17 Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs), articulated in 169 Targets to be reached by 2030, were
born to respond to this need (Flückiger and Seth 2016).
The SDGs constitute a big occasion for University to restructure its strategy and
bring up-to-date the education system to respond to the current societal challenges
(Leal Filho et al. 2018). Given the size of the task and the critical role universities
have in supporting, researching and delivering on them, there is an urgent need
for the educational sector to accelerate insights on the SDGs complementarity and
prioritization (Hartz-Karp and Marinova 2017). However, this transition toward a
mission-based university is still difficult, since departments and administrative unites
operate in silos and the leader’s agenda does not allow a real flexible and adaptable
model to feed in (Klein 2015; König et al. 2013; Tejedor et al. 2018). Researchers and
administrators also lack tools to identify which interactions are the most important to
tackle, and evidence to show how particular interventions and policies help or hinder
progress towards the goals (Ferrer-Balas et al. 2010; Meadowcroft 2009; Parris and
Kates 2003). Indeed, “missional motivation” has been regarded as one of the factors
triggering the co-creation of sustainability, forming multi-actor partnerships and
implementing solutions for localised issues (Yarime et al. 2012).
This contribution highlights the match between the current sustainability strategy at the Politecnico di Torino (PoliTO) and the SDGs, introducing the national