Information School News

During a recent field trip to Mexico City, Jorge Martins presented the Regional Technology Foresight project and discussed how the combination of emerging industrial technologies can reinvent products and services, promote innovative business models and accelerate enterprise-wide growth. At the Instituto Politecnico Nacional’s Interdisciplinary Professional Unit of Engineering and Social and Administrative Sciences (UPPICSA), Jorge discussed how firms, especially small and medium-size manufacturing firms, face multiple challenges in the adoption of novel industrial technologies. In order to build and sustain a lead in the race to exploitation of the opportunities, firms need to broaden and deepen their knowledge about digital technologies and then develop tailored digital manufacturing strategies. At the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Library and Information Research Institute (IIBI), Jorge presented on 'Technology foresight for a future-orien...

Andrew Cox and Jorge Martins were in Mexico City last week, working with Information School alumni, Gibran Rivera (of the Instituto Politécnico Nacional), on an exciting joint project to explore how knowledge can be shared in the context of cultural sustainability. The project investigates the creation of knowledge sharing experiences between eco-friendly social enterprises in Mexico and Sheffield. In one part of the trip Andrew and Jorge participated in a tree planting expedition, organised by Chinamapoylo, a co-op dedicated to sustainable food production in the unique environment of the chinampas, on the edge of Mexico City. The chinampas are a highly productive form of agricultural production based on strips of land reclaimed from the lake in a practice that has survived from pre-hispanic times. They are now under threat from pollution, mass tourism and urban encroachment by the megalopolis of Mexico City. The ahuejote trees (a kind of willow) they were participating in ...