Innovation

The new 2021-2026 Strategic Plan boasts three innovative features that make it up-to-date and flexible. It reflects our identity as a great university that wants to address present and future challenges and seek solutions for a changing world by abandoning static traditional planning models that are not accessible to all.

To start with the University was analysed from inside and out to understand how to structure and organise the strategic document. The Rector favoured replacing the traditional subdivisions of Teaching, Research and "Third Mission" with a more up-to-date structure of strategies, thus making the document more transversal.

Teaching, Research and "Third Mission" activities are still today central our university, but they are not three remote islands cut off from each other and the outside world. We are therefore creating a multidimensional interpretation of the three fundamental functions of the university, in three connected scopes: PEOPLE, PLACES and PROCESSES.

It is a system that identifies the transversal axes that affect all of its sectors, and which activates a mechanism of communicating vessels in which the individual sectors are profiled as operational perimeters open to the flow (of practices, policies and data). Through this mechanism, the sectors interlock at all levels and in every part (scopes, priorities and goals). In this way, a synergistic macro-mechanism is created in which each sector is interrelated and which, on the whole, functions osmotically, guaranteeing - by virtue of its internal coherence - cohesion and constant exchange between its components. This demonstrates the correctness of the initial feasibility study, the conception and subsequent planning. These aspects prove the effectiveness of the implementation and the suitability and congruence at operational level of the design, making it possible to move from the idea to its implementation and to build an open system in which transversality is fundamental for planning.

Measurement tools play a central role in all phases of the strategic planning process.

Data and indicators related to the primary and support processes for the University’s missions are functional:

• to the decisions taken when defining the Plan;
• to the analyses made while monitoring the implementation of the Plan and its progress towards its goals;
• to the actions taken towards continued improvement having achieved results.

Three tools were identified to better calibrate the strategy into goals and actions: measurements of the economic and human resources put in place to implement the Plan (used in internal monitoring), action indicators, which measure the implementation and progress, and impact indicators, which measure the final effect of the strategy focusing on the achievement of the set goals.

The aim is to guarantee objectivity and prioritise any intervention. This is achieved through integrated planning that pays heed to economic-financial, human and instrumental resources, and allows the progress of initiatives and the achievement of results and strategic goals to be monitored using performance and impact indicators.

In addition UniTo receives national public funds, which are distribuited also on the basis of the performace of individual universities. It is therefore essential to incorporate the measuring tools used in national policies into the University control system, so as to monitor trends and anticipate corrective action to maximise results.
With reference to the measurement tools and the monitoring of the periodic results, a dynamic model has been chosen. The Strategic Plan will be periodically updated by the university’s Governing body in order to keep it up-to-date and focused. The Strategic Plan, therefore, is dynamic and responsive to any need to adapt to change.
Moreover, data and information will be made available to the entire academic community, keeping everyone involved and informed.