CARIPLO FACTORY SRL SOCIETA' BENEFIF

Their core work

Cariplo Factory is a Milan-based benefit corporation operating at the intersection of social innovation, impact investment, and urban systems change. Linked to the Fondazione Cariplo ecosystem, they design and facilitate processes that connect public institutions, research teams, businesses, and civil society around shared urban challenges — particularly food systems and industrial district regeneration. Their practical contribution in EU projects is to bring co-design methodology, living lab facilitation, and impact investment framing to large Innovation Actions. They are not a research producer but a process architect: they help diverse consortia translate research findings into policy adoption and scalable practice.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

With both projects starting simultaneously in 2020, there is no meaningful temporal evolution to trace across their H2020 participation — they entered the programme with a clear, already-formed identity. What the two projects together reveal is a dual focus: industrial-urban transformation (CENTRINNO) and food system governance (FOOD TRAILS), with impact investment and living lab methodology as the connective tissue. Their role as third party in CENTRINNO versus funded participant in FOOD TRAILS suggests urban food policy is the area where they bring more direct, billable expertise.

Their deepest engagement is in urban food systems and impact investment, suggesting future collaborations around Food 2030, urban sustainability governance, and social finance for city-level transitions would be the strongest fit.

How they like to work

Cariplo Factory has never led an H2020 project — they join as participant or third party, which fits their role as a facilitating organization rather than a research institution. Despite only two projects, they have connected with 58 unique partners across 17 countries, reflecting the very large consortium structures typical of Innovation Actions. They are valued in consortia for their network, facilitation capacity, and credibility in bridging public and private actors — not for delivering technical research tasks.

Despite a project count of just two, Cariplo Factory has reached 58 unique partners across 17 countries — a breadth explained by the large, multi-city consortium structures of the Innovation Actions they joined. Their geographic footprint is pan-European, anchored in Northern Italy.

What sets them apart

Cariplo Factory occupies a rare niche as a benefit corporation with deep roots in the Fondazione Cariplo philanthropic ecosystem, giving them a convening power and institutional credibility that most private companies cannot replicate in socially-oriented consortia. They bring impact investment framing — the ability to connect EU project outcomes to private capital and social enterprise models — which is uncommon in research-heavy projects. For a consortium needing to demonstrate real-world policy uptake, social finance pathways, or community co-design, they offer a bridge that few Italian private-sector partners can.

Highlights from their portfolio

• FOOD TRAILS
  Their only funded participant role (EUR 305,462), directly aligned with EU Food 2030 policy goals and covering urban food governance, living labs, and impact investment — the clearest expression of their core expertise.
• CENTRINNO
  Involvement as third party in a large Innovation Action on industrial district regeneration demonstrates their reach into urban transformation agendas beyond food, likely via the Cariplo Foundation network.