INIZIATIVA CUBE SRL

Their core work

INIZIATIVA CUBE SRL is a Naples-based innovation consultancy that works at the crossroads of cultural heritage management, sustainable tourism, and participatory design. Their real-world contribution is bringing open innovation methodologies and human-centred design processes into EU research projects aimed at making cultural assets economically viable and socially meaningful. In both projects they have joined, they appear to contribute expertise in collaborative co-creation processes, financing instrument design, and community-led approaches to heritage and tourism. They are a small, specialist firm operating across European consortia rather than in domestic markets alone.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

CUBE's earliest H2020 work (CLIC, 2017) centred on the investment and financing side of cultural heritage — how circular economic models can attract capital into building reuse and heritage regeneration. By their second project (Be.CULTOUR, 2021), the focus had pivoted decisively toward the human and process dimension: open innovation, co-creation, participatory design, and the tourism experience itself. The shift is from "how do we fund heritage?" to "how do communities and visitors engage with it?" This suggests the company has been deepening its methodological toolkit in human-centred design while maintaining cultural heritage as the through-line.

CUBE is moving toward a profile as a human-centred innovation and co-design specialist within the culture and tourism space, making them a natural fit for future projects in creative industries, cultural policy, community-led regeneration, or participatory urban development.

How they like to work

CUBE operates exclusively as a consortium partner — they have never led an H2020 project — which suggests they are most comfortable contributing a defined specialist role within a larger coordinated effort. Their two projects involved broad European consortia (26 unique partners across 16 countries), indicating they are experienced at working in large, multi-stakeholder research settings. There is no evidence of repeat partnerships, suggesting they bring open networks rather than a closed inner circle.

CUBE has built a surprisingly wide European network for a two-project SME: 26 distinct consortium partners spread across 16 countries. Their network appears genuinely pan-European rather than Italy-centric, likely shaped by the cross-border cultural heritage and tourism topics they work on.

What sets them apart

CUBE occupies an unusual niche for an Italian private company: they sit at the intersection of cultural heritage economics and participatory design methodology, a combination rarely found in a single small firm. Their value to a consortium is not technical research but process expertise — they know how to design co-creation workflows, engage communities, and think through financing models for culture-driven projects. For project coordinators building consortia around heritage, tourism, or creative industries, CUBE offers a practitioner perspective that research institutes and universities typically cannot provide.

Highlights from their portfolio

• Be.CULTOUR
  The largest project CUBE has participated in (EUR 242,375 in funding, 2021-2024) and their most thematically rich, covering open innovation, human-centred design, europeanisation, and circular tourism — all within a single IA project, signalling broad scope and applied ambition.
• CLIC
  CUBE's entry into H2020 research tackled the hard problem of attracting private investment into cultural heritage reuse, an early signal of their interest in the economics of culture rather than purely academic heritage studies.