The Strategy to Attract Young International Talents to Milan

SEVEN BOCCONI STUDENTS DEVISED THE WINNING STRATEGY DURING CITI VENTURES AND YESMILANO'S HACKATHON. AN EXAMPLE OF HOW BUSINESSES, UNIVERSITIES AND GOVERNMENTS CAN WORK TOGETHER TO SOLVE COMPLEX, REAL WORLD CHALLENGES

Four hours to develop an innovative strategy to make Milan the global destination for highly talented students and workers and a trip to Tel Aviv to visit the Citi’s Innovation Hub as prize. The hackathon, attended by over 100 students from Bocconi and Politecnico, was organized by Citi Ventures and YesMilano. The first place went to a group made up of 7 Bocconi students, 6 of whom enrolled in the Bachelor in International Politics and Government – Filippo Bandini, Zakaria Bekkali, Angelica Bozzi, Mirko Comerlati, Paul-Emile Duroux, Chiara Gilardi, and Maria Vittoria Venezia - and a student from the Politecnico - Krunal Gajera.

The task of the participants was to propose new ideas in order to attract international talents to Milan as well as to make them stay in the city. The winning group proposed the creation of a "MiHub", a building divided into four areas. A bookshop/cafeteria to allow international students not only to have a place to study, but also to meet and socialize with people who share their same situation; an info point to receive assistance for bureaucratic issues; a space dedicated to Italian language courses; an area dedicated to the work sector where the companies that finance the hub can organize presentations and recruitment sessions.

"This last aspect would help to overcome one of the problems that prevents international talents to decide to stay in our city: the language barrier," explains Zakaria, student. "On the one hand international students would be encouraged to learn Italian, on the other hand companies would have the opportunity to recruit talents without worrying about their Italian language skills, often still essential to work in many Italian companies today. A long-term effect, however, would be the increase in recruitment among international talents, which would lead not only to encourage them to stay, but also to the creation of an increasingly international ecosystems inside companies, where the language barrier would no longer be a problem!”.

“Problem solving with universities and students is exactly what our CUPID program – Citi University Partnerships in Innovation & Discovery – does,” says Vanessa Colella, Citi's Chief Innovation Officer and Head of Citi Ventures. “This was a great example of how businesses, universities and governments can work together to solve complex, real world challenges.”   
 
 

by Benedetta Ciotto