A journey around the entrepreneur
Giuseppe Berta writes a book about the figure at the heart of every company
Who is an entrepreneur really? This is a crucial question in order to understand the nature of a company, i.e. the creature that comes to life thanks to the entrepreneur’s work. A body and an organisation, a set of machines and of lives, a company is plied to resemble the entrepreneur, and immediately thereafter the managers which he or she surrounds himself/herself with. It is a question of culture as well as technique. Today still, just as in the past.
The question about the nature of the entrepreneur is therefore an important and fascinating one. Some answers to this question were sought and found by Giuseppe Berta, who teaches Contemporary History at Bocconi University in Milan but who also boasts a lengthy collaboration with the Italian business system. In his “L’enigma dell’imprenditore (e il destino dell’impresa)” (The enigma of the entrepreneur and the fate of the enterprise), Berta tackles the issue first from a strictly historical point of view and then from a modern-day perspective. The story therefore begins from the middle of the 18th Century, when the entrepreneur is represented as the engine of the economic process. So, pure classic economics, the evolution of which is followed with a plain and understandable – but not for this matter superficial – language. From the classic image of the entrepreneur, the author then moves on to the identification of more specific figures and to the identification of the entrepreneur with his capacity to innovate. Right up to the advent of the US managerial approach. Entrepreneur and manager went hand in hand for some time, explains Berta, and then changed again. With the spread of information and communication technologies, the issue of entrepreneurship went back to playing a key role. New figures of entrepreneurs – like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk -, configure according Berta a “capitalism of platforms” that is under discussion today and that opens the way towards a new image of the entrepreneur himself/herself.
Berta recounts and analyses, placing the emphasis on one aspect rather than on another. It is a smooth read, which accompanies the reader along a short trip in terms of the number of pages, but one that is intense in terms of contents. A book about history and economics, the last literary production by Giuseppe Berta should be read carefully as it also opens up future reasoning. Indeed, right in the last few lines of the story, one reads: “For the moment, the fortunes of entrepreneurship depend on a world that is shaped, concurrently, by technologies, by the mobile boundaries of the international economy and by the excessive expansion of availability and of the financial circuits. A mixture that can apparently endlessly feed opportunities and the number of new entrepreneurs. But until when?”.
L’enigma dell’imprenditore (e il destino dell’impresa) (The enigma of the entrepreneur (and the fate of the enterprise)
Giuseppe Berta
Il Mulino, 2018
Giuseppe Berta writes a book about the figure at the heart of every company
Who is an entrepreneur really? This is a crucial question in order to understand the nature of a company, i.e. the creature that comes to life thanks to the entrepreneur’s work. A body and an organisation, a set of machines and of lives, a company is plied to resemble the entrepreneur, and immediately thereafter the managers which he or she surrounds himself/herself with. It is a question of culture as well as technique. Today still, just as in the past.
The question about the nature of the entrepreneur is therefore an important and fascinating one. Some answers to this question were sought and found by Giuseppe Berta, who teaches Contemporary History at Bocconi University in Milan but who also boasts a lengthy collaboration with the Italian business system. In his “L’enigma dell’imprenditore (e il destino dell’impresa)” (The enigma of the entrepreneur and the fate of the enterprise), Berta tackles the issue first from a strictly historical point of view and then from a modern-day perspective. The story therefore begins from the middle of the 18th Century, when the entrepreneur is represented as the engine of the economic process. So, pure classic economics, the evolution of which is followed with a plain and understandable – but not for this matter superficial – language. From the classic image of the entrepreneur, the author then moves on to the identification of more specific figures and to the identification of the entrepreneur with his capacity to innovate. Right up to the advent of the US managerial approach. Entrepreneur and manager went hand in hand for some time, explains Berta, and then changed again. With the spread of information and communication technologies, the issue of entrepreneurship went back to playing a key role. New figures of entrepreneurs – like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk -, configure according Berta a “capitalism of platforms” that is under discussion today and that opens the way towards a new image of the entrepreneur himself/herself.
Berta recounts and analyses, placing the emphasis on one aspect rather than on another. It is a smooth read, which accompanies the reader along a short trip in terms of the number of pages, but one that is intense in terms of contents. A book about history and economics, the last literary production by Giuseppe Berta should be read carefully as it also opens up future reasoning. Indeed, right in the last few lines of the story, one reads: “For the moment, the fortunes of entrepreneurship depend on a world that is shaped, concurrently, by technologies, by the mobile boundaries of the international economy and by the excessive expansion of availability and of the financial circuits. A mixture that can apparently endlessly feed opportunities and the number of new entrepreneurs. But until when?”.
L’enigma dell’imprenditore (e il destino dell’impresa) (The enigma of the entrepreneur (and the fate of the enterprise)
Giuseppe Berta
Il Mulino, 2018