Humans

Cosimo Panetta

CEO

Cosimo, a serial entrepreneur and high-tech company manager, has spent the last 11 years as a co-founder and manager at The Doers (now Zest Innovation), a leading open innovation consultancy serving corporates, venture builders, startups, and startup hubs. In 2015 he also co-founded 42Accelerator, Italy's first entirely private early-stage accelerator. An expert in Innovation Governance, Corporate Venture Clienting, and Corporate Intrapreneurship, Cosimo always stays ahead of the curve. With aipermind, he continues this journey, targeting companies eager to embrace innovation deeply and seriously, leveraging AI as the "new electricity."

Irene Cassarino

CTO

Irene is an entrepreneur, engineer, writer, and innovation coach with a PhD in open innovation and 20 years of experience in early-stage innovation management. Fourteen years ago, she founded The Doers, an innovation consultancy boutique that has since evolved into Zest Innovation, part of the Zest Group (2024). She also co-founded 42Accelerator. An expert in Customer Development, Irene developed a new investigative method called Customer Scientific Investigation and authored a book on the topic titled "Mercati Infiniti" (published by Franco Angeli). She believes that innovation will save the world, one problem at a time, and that AI will address the challenges faced by innovators, thereby accelerating sustainable progress. Passionate about data science and an apprentice in machine learning, she uses coding like anything else: to build and experiment.

Intelligence

Humans in innovation

Intelligence is inherently human, complete with its strengths and flaws. We focus on overcoming those flaws to propel innovators beyond their limits. After years of observing and working alongside innovators both inside and outside companies, we've learned that innovation lies at the intersection of art and science. It's a creative expression as well as a structured process and managerial discipline. Without this structure, inventions struggle to make an impact.

The human mind excels at imagination, idea generation, learning, and exploration, yet often stumbles when it comes to embracing science, process, discipline and repetitive analytical tasks.

The challenge

This presents a fascinating challenge for AI. We're not just talking about generative AI as a thought partner.

We're crafting AI applications that lift the burden of potential mistakes from innovators, enabling them to explore deeply and imagine freely, while making a real impact on the world.