Our Research Center

A community of research

“scientia Atque usus” Research Center  for Generative Communication (established in 1991) is a Research Body of the Nonprofit Sector with a specific political and social mission: to share Generative Communication between the world of scholars, experts and highly specialized professionals (scientia) and the world of business, associations, the world of work, institutions and, above all, citizens (usus).

Generative Communication helps to strengthen cooperation, to overcome the solitude, the self-referentiality and the mechanical logic of the assembly line of our society. It activates relationships among stakeholders for the strengthening of personal and public relationships and the identification of resources (not only economic). Through Research Projects, sAu Community redefines the concept of values and the relationship between values and the value of products and services.

Focus on sAu Intervention Areas
Health and Healthcare
sAu Research Center has been working for years in the area of health and healthcare with the aim to start knowledge-generating processes in which healthcare companies, hospitals, associations and institutions cooperate to increase the level of health literacy in the medical-scientific field of citizens.

What does Generative Communication do?

Analyze

and enhance the perceived and the world of use

Build
communities in which stakeholders cooperate with researchers and experts
Bring to light
unused resources to strengthen the quality and effectiveness of Projects and their products
Design
object oriented solutions, against the current trend towards fragmentation
Develop
sector innovations that create system innovation
Monitor
the impacts and innovation generated by the products/services
Our Intervention Areas and Fields of Action

sAu Research Center works on Intervention Areas that range from agriculture to rural development, from health to healthcare, from sustainability to Cultural Heritage. Each Intervention Area is organized by Fields of Action.
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How do We Work?
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sAu Research Center has created “Atque”, the Design and Communication System that supports stakeholders, researchers, experts and citizens in the development of Generative Communication Projects.

“Atque” is a suite of tools, closely connected and interactive, that are intended to carry out research, design, development, documentation, monitoring, communication and training activities.

Our Values, our History

The Values that Inspire sAu Research Center

sAu Research Center identifies the complexity of society as an immense wealth of resources. It identifies the fragmentation of knowledge and skills as the main obstacle to scientific, civic and social progress.
Our History, our Partners. Since 1991
Great projects need good travel companions.
The story below is dedicated to all those who have accompanied us so far.

Our Intervention Areas

Agriculture and Rural Development

A New Idea and a New Practise of Value

The concept of value, and its practical application in all socio-economic, cultural and political sectors, must be radically redefined, moving away from a definition based on purely economic and financial parameters.

Our Projects are based on an idea of Agriculture and Rural Development aimed to redefine the concept of value in agriculture, strengthening, in a systemic key, the sharing of knowledge and the cooperation between all the realities that operate on the territory and that usually do not communicate with each other.

Culture and Society

Knowledge and practices to build shared knowledge

We believe in a society in which everyone can exercise the right to live his/her daily lives – at work, in family, in community – in order to know, enrich and improve his/her own life.

sAu Research Center aims to broaden the concept of Cultural Heritage, proposing it as a tool through which to redesign the relationship between the tangible and intangible historical-cultural heritage and the socio-economic fabric. The projects in this area are based on community building activities to facilitate the collaboration of varied stakeholders and strengthen the identity characteristics that bring added value to the use of these important common assets.

Research and Third Sector

For a New Culture of Research

We believe that it is more urgent than ever to defend the autonomy of the world of research, and its authority and credibility, redefining the relationship on the one hand with the values that inspire it and on the other with the complex world of daily living acts of citizens.

Health and Healthcare

Toward a new communication pact between medical and healthcare personnel, researchers, institutions, associations and citizens

We believe that the many, possible forms of participation in health choices and the ways of using social and health services should become acts of active and conscious citizenship.

sAu Research Center has been working for years in the field of health and healthcare with the aim to initiate knowledge-generating processes in which health companies, hospitals, associations and institutions cooperate to increase the level of health literacy of citizens.

Daily sustainability
and Climate Change

A Common Action to Bring Out Unexpressed Resources

What we are experiencing is not a crisis due to a lack of resources, but it is due to the inability to recognize and value the infinite resources that we can find with our creativity and intelligence.

Technologies to Enhance
the Human Touch

The Enhancement of Human Creativity

Technologies (old and new ones), every form of automation, mechanical and otherwise, must be rethought and redesigned to respond, first of all, to the inalienable values of our humanity.

We believe in an idea of technology that is in support of human freedom and the right of individuals to know and guide their behavior according to the values in which they recognize themselves. It is a technology based on critical intelligence and human creativity: on human touch.

Some of our Research Projects
Agriculture and Rural Development
Agriculture and Rural Development
New EVO. The value of olive growing for the sustainable development of territories
Culture and Society
Culture and Society
PLURAL – Public Libraries Undertaking geneRAtive vaLues

Health and Healthcare

Health and Healthcare

Sport that Generates Health. A New Information Tool for Citizenship
Who is Afraid of Childbirth. Analyzing the Social Dimension of Motherhood
Technologies to Enhance the Human Touch
Technologies to Enhance the Human Touch
Don Lorenzo Milani Generative Center
School and digital culture: let's start from don Milani!

The Generative Communication and its Technique since 1991

Generative Communication is a technique to create communities of values, interests and objectives that cooperate for the development of products/services. 

Generative Communication, conceived by Professor Luca Toschi, by its inclusive and participatory nature, promotes collaboration and coordination between the world of research (scientia) and the world of work, institutions, citizens (usus) and propose the implementation of innovative products – ensuring the active role of the communities – in response to problems with a strong economic, social and cultural impact and to the dis-integration of specialisms and non-communicating sectors.

The solutions proposed through the use of the Generative Communication are characterized by an idea of innovation that, starting from specific aspects, becomes the driving force that leads to systemic and non-sectoral innovation processes.

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Our Design and Communication System

The “Atque” Design and Communication System is an integrated system of tools intended to facilitate the cooperation among stakeholders in order to encourage and constantly expand communities of interests around a project. It is also designed to communicate the results achieved by the project through a precise strategy of content publishing that can be useful for expanding communities outside the project.
The Integrated System Atque aims to facilitate both the internal communication, the stakeholder engagement and training activities, the implementation of the networking/dissemination.

Our Design and Communication System is a suite composed of:

Officine

It is a place where sAu community carries out design, development, management and monitoring activities for projects based on Generative Communication.  It strengthens collaboration and cooperation between all stakeholders involved.

Library
It organizes and makes available the knowledge that feeds the Projects: reports, qualitative and quantitative analysis, but also the best innovative practices of Generative Communication. It systematizes the collected data to enhance them as elements of knowledge functional to their reuse in different contexts.
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It collects and organizes relationships and contacts and implements targeted communication and community building strategies.
Matrix allows you to enter and update the personal data of subjects and to monitor the status of contacts of people and organizations involved in a project.
Academy
It is the training center of sAu Research Center that proposes object-oriented activities. It responds to specific needs that emerge from Projects: from the training reserved to the personnel of organizations, institutions, foundations and  associations to initiatives addressed to stakeholders to give them a role in the project activities.

It is a place where sAu community carries out design, development, management and monitoring activities for projects based on Generative Communication.  It strengthens collaboration and cooperation between all stakeholders involved.

It organizes and makes available the knowledge that feeds the projects: reports, qualitative and quantitative analysis, but also the best innovative practices of Generative Communication. It systematizes the collected data to enhance them as elements of knowledge functional to their reuse in different contexts.
It collects and organizes relationships and contacts and implements targeted communication and community building strategies. Matrix allows you to enter and update the personal data of subjects and to monitor the status of contacts of people and organizations involved in a project.

It is the training center of sAu Research Center that proposes object-oriented activities.
It responds to specific needs that emerge within the Projects carried out by sAu community: from the training reserved to the personnel of organizations, institutions, foundations and  associations to initiatives addressed to stakeholders to give them a role in the project activities.

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Officine, Library, Matrix and Academy are complemented by other sAu Research Center tools:

sAu Quaderni, the journal used to publish contents and information to disseminate the project in all the phases;

international series of transdisciplinary studies.

About Us
Many disciplines, knowledge, experiences, competences converge in the projects of sAu Research Center: for this reason the activities involve researchers, but also professionals, of different origins and very articulated scientific-professional backgrounds.
This allows sAu Research Center to offer its partners tools for analysis, design, development and communication monitoring capable of responding – immediately – to the most specific and diversified needs.
Luca-Toschi

Luca Toschi

Founder and President of scientia Atque usus Research Center

Director of Center for Generative Communication of University of Florence and of Lab Center for Generative Communication of PIN – University Center (Prato).

Full Professor of Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes, University of Florence.

Alessandra-Anichini
Alessandra Anichini

Co-founding member of scientia Atque usus Research Center

Researcher at INDIRE – National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research
Viola-Davini

Viola Davini

Co-founding member and Association Secretary of scientia Atque usus Research Center

Ph.D.

Research fellow at Center for Generative Communication of University of Florence.

Marta-guarducci profilo

Marta Guarducci

Member of scientia Atque usus Research Center

Research assistant at Center for Generative Communication of University of Florence.
Eugenio-Pandolfini
Eugenio Pandolfini

Co-founding member and Association Treasurer of scientia Atque usus Research Center

Ph.D.

Researcher at Center for Generative Communication of University of Florence.

Ilaria-papini
Ilaria Papini

Member of scientia Atque usus Research Center

Research assistant at Center for Generative Communication of University of Florence.

Marco-Sbardella
Marco Sbardella

Co-founding member of scientia Atque usus Research Center

Ph.D.

Research fellow at Center for Generative Communication of University of Florence.

Vespi

Valentina Vespi

Member of editorial staff of sAu Quaderni

Publicist journalist, Order of Journalists of Tuscany
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