Access the Online Archive
Search the Historical Archive of the Pirelli Foundation for sources and materials. Select the type of support you are interested in and write the keywords of your research.
    Select one of the following categories
  • Documents
  • Photographs
  • Drawings and posters
  • Audio-visuals
  • Publications and magazines
  • All
Help with your research
To request to view the materials in the Historical Archive and in the libraries of the Pirelli Foundation for study and research purposes and/or to find out how to request the use of materials for loans and exhibitions, please fill in the form below. You will receive an email confirming receipt of the request and you will be contacted.
Pirelli Foundation Educational Courses

Select the education level of the school
Back
Primary schools
Pirelli Foundation Educational Courses
Please fill in your details and the staff of Pirelli Foundation Educational will contact you to arrange the dates of the course.

I declare I have read  the privacy policy, and authorise the Pirelli Foundation to process my personal data in order to send communications, also by email, about initiatives/conferences organised by the Pirelli Foundation.

Back
Lower secondary school
Pirelli Foundation Educational Courses
Please fill in your details and the staff of Pirelli Foundation Educational will contact you to arrange the dates of the course.
Back
Upper secondary school
Pirelli Foundation Educational Courses
Please fill in your details and the staff of Pirelli Foundation Educational will contact you to arrange the dates of the course.
Back
University
Pirelli Foundation Educational Courses

Do you want to organize a training programme with your students? For information and reservations, write to universita@fondazionepirelli.org

Visit the Foundation
For information on the Foundation's activities and admission to the spaces,
please call +39 0264423971 or write to visite@fondazionepirelli.org

Here’s why factories are good for Italy and for bridging the gap with the South, too

Perché le fabbriche fanno bene all’Italia (Why factories are good for Italy) – a very effective title for the book written by Rachele Sessa, director of the Ergo Foundation (an organisation based in Varese that unites companies, trade unions and universities to research industry-related topics) and published by Rubbettino. Her book gained an honourable mention at Potenza’s Premio Basilicata literary prize, held last Sunday and won by Maurizio de Giovanni’s L’equazione del cuore (The heart equation), published by Mondadori (Fiction category) and Paolo Bricco’s Adriano Olivetti, un italiano del Novecento (Adriano Olivetti, an Italian man from the 20th century), published by Rizzoli (Economics category). And it’s really important that nowadays, in such a difficult period rife with crises and uncertainties, and especially in a city of the South, the word “factory” is heard, a term that evokes the cornerstone of Italy’s development, including that of its southern regions.

We need to safeguard industry to guarantee Italy’s future, keeps on insisting, in recent weeks too, the president of territorial entrepreneurial institution Confindustria Carlo Bonomi, as we face the economic and social storm unleashed by the energy crisis, the war in Ukraine, inflation and the dark, looming shadows of recession. We need to enhance Italy’s industrial skills, conducive to a prompt recovery after the most critical phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and that continue to be key to yet another possible recovery, as economists, research centres and entrepreneurs with an eye on innovation and export reiterate.

Rachele Sessa’s book provides data and analyses that support this stance. Italy can’t do without its industry, its industrial history and its deep-rooted territorial expertise, or it wouldn’t be able to hold on to its current global positioning. Sessa maintains that, “If we describe ourselves as the most beautiful country in the world, it’s not merely because of our monuments, arts or scenery, but also because of our ability to produce objects and machinery appreciated all over the world for their efficiency and elegance, a typically Italian industrial added value.”

Unfortunately, nowadays our public opinion is not sufficiently conscious of this heritage and of the value of industry (as we repeated several time in this blog). Furthermore, over time, neither politicians nor the public administration implemented coherent and long-term decisions aimed at enhancing industry’s “polytechnic culture”, strengthening the link between the old “do well” approach and new competitive needs (Museimpresa, the Italian association of business archives and corporate museums, with its over 120 members including large, medium and small enterprises, it’s a prime example of this link) or promoting factories’ tendency towards innovation and their propensity to become effective means for social cohesion and the promotion of wealth – for the new generations, too.

Now, as Sessa demonstrates, in order to face the two great intertwined challenges that are soon to come, i.e. the digital and environmental transitions – or, the twin transition – “it is essential that we stop conceiving factories through 20th-century stereotypes.”

Indeed, factories, “by their nature and when properly managed, actually represent hubs of modernisation scattered throughout the territory. As such, it’s about time for the public opinion to better recognise the opportunities that the industrial world entails, not just from a technological perspective but also in terms of its proclivity to generate innovation and experimentation that will benefit the whole of society.”

This is why, in a nation like Italy, policies need to place industry at the centre and, as stated by Sessa, rallying for “the industry party is a civic, rather than strictly political, choice.” Words that the new Italian government led by Giorgia Meloni (leader of a right-wing party whose culture, up to now, has shown no sign of wise or deep-rooted industrial and productive traits) will really have to take into account, not only through its declared political aims (which are however notable, such as the introduction of significant tax cuts) but also through coherent and forward-looking decisions. Namely, by spurring the twin transition, and keeping Italy’s position within the European context and the maps tracing the new boundaries of a “selective globalisation” firmly in place (our industry has a strong aptitude for international trade, export and investments, and has no calling for sovereignist or protectionist attitudes).

While the North is playing a more dynamic and integrated role within European development trends, “factory” is also a term that’d suit the South very well, as industry could tackle the widening North-South divide between income and opportunities.

The Premio Basilicata literary prize’s winners we mentioned above are further proof that at least a section of Italy’s more informed public opinion is aware of all this (Bricco’s book about Olivetti also includes some incredibly interesting pages about the company’s investments in Pozzuoli as well as notions that, from Ivrea, aspire to develop the South’s economy and expertise). In fact, if we must think in terms of sustainable, environmental, social, economic and cultural development, then we also need to think more critically and proactively about industry as a driving force that generates employment, income and wealth. A process of change that should also include agriculture, tourism and health. A kind of “metamorphosis”, almost: from an embittered South currently relying on welfare assistance and warped decisions such as the “citizenship income” (which neither boosts employment nor adequately addresses the region’s widespread needs and poverty) and Neo-Bourbon nostalgia, to a South acquiring a leading role in manufacturing processes, part of the European recovery context and embodying the response to the Mediterranean region’s newly rediscovered geopolitical central position.

A South that, basically, could thrive on manufacturing, the market, merit (where ‘merit’ is the reward of initiative, creativity, the quality of a job well done).

Here’s why, then, it makes sense to talk about “factories” – or, even better, “neo-factories” – manufacturers where high-tech solutions, production, research, services and logistics combine with regional expertise and scientific innovation. All qualities that the South, over the years, has brilliantly displayed.

Lately, the attention that large and medium companies – Google and Accenture, Apple and Microsoft, KPMG and Bosch, Pirelli and Bip, STM and Technoprobe, and so on – are paying to young women and men in the South has been featuring in economic news, a process led by the digital economy and the spread of Artificial Intelligence.

Thus, even if ISTAT data show a widening in the North-South divide, lack of investments, brain drain, material and intellectual impoverishment, the challenge to overturn this situation is still on – and factories are of the essence, precisely because they’re a good thing. For the South of Italy, too.

Perché le fabbriche fanno bene all’Italia (Why factories are good for Italy) – a very effective title for the book written by Rachele Sessa, director of the Ergo Foundation (an organisation based in Varese that unites companies, trade unions and universities to research industry-related topics) and published by Rubbettino. Her book gained an honourable mention at Potenza’s Premio Basilicata literary prize, held last Sunday and won by Maurizio de Giovanni’s L’equazione del cuore (The heart equation), published by Mondadori (Fiction category) and Paolo Bricco’s Adriano Olivetti, un italiano del Novecento (Adriano Olivetti, an Italian man from the 20th century), published by Rizzoli (Economics category). And it’s really important that nowadays, in such a difficult period rife with crises and uncertainties, and especially in a city of the South, the word “factory” is heard, a term that evokes the cornerstone of Italy’s development, including that of its southern regions.

We need to safeguard industry to guarantee Italy’s future, keeps on insisting, in recent weeks too, the president of territorial entrepreneurial institution Confindustria Carlo Bonomi, as we face the economic and social storm unleashed by the energy crisis, the war in Ukraine, inflation and the dark, looming shadows of recession. We need to enhance Italy’s industrial skills, conducive to a prompt recovery after the most critical phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and that continue to be key to yet another possible recovery, as economists, research centres and entrepreneurs with an eye on innovation and export reiterate.

Rachele Sessa’s book provides data and analyses that support this stance. Italy can’t do without its industry, its industrial history and its deep-rooted territorial expertise, or it wouldn’t be able to hold on to its current global positioning. Sessa maintains that, “If we describe ourselves as the most beautiful country in the world, it’s not merely because of our monuments, arts or scenery, but also because of our ability to produce objects and machinery appreciated all over the world for their efficiency and elegance, a typically Italian industrial added value.”

Unfortunately, nowadays our public opinion is not sufficiently conscious of this heritage and of the value of industry (as we repeated several time in this blog). Furthermore, over time, neither politicians nor the public administration implemented coherent and long-term decisions aimed at enhancing industry’s “polytechnic culture”, strengthening the link between the old “do well” approach and new competitive needs (Museimpresa, the Italian association of business archives and corporate museums, with its over 120 members including large, medium and small enterprises, it’s a prime example of this link) or promoting factories’ tendency towards innovation and their propensity to become effective means for social cohesion and the promotion of wealth – for the new generations, too.

Now, as Sessa demonstrates, in order to face the two great intertwined challenges that are soon to come, i.e. the digital and environmental transitions – or, the twin transition – “it is essential that we stop conceiving factories through 20th-century stereotypes.”

Indeed, factories, “by their nature and when properly managed, actually represent hubs of modernisation scattered throughout the territory. As such, it’s about time for the public opinion to better recognise the opportunities that the industrial world entails, not just from a technological perspective but also in terms of its proclivity to generate innovation and experimentation that will benefit the whole of society.”

This is why, in a nation like Italy, policies need to place industry at the centre and, as stated by Sessa, rallying for “the industry party is a civic, rather than strictly political, choice.” Words that the new Italian government led by Giorgia Meloni (leader of a right-wing party whose culture, up to now, has shown no sign of wise or deep-rooted industrial and productive traits) will really have to take into account, not only through its declared political aims (which are however notable, such as the introduction of significant tax cuts) but also through coherent and forward-looking decisions. Namely, by spurring the twin transition, and keeping Italy’s position within the European context and the maps tracing the new boundaries of a “selective globalisation” firmly in place (our industry has a strong aptitude for international trade, export and investments, and has no calling for sovereignist or protectionist attitudes).

While the North is playing a more dynamic and integrated role within European development trends, “factory” is also a term that’d suit the South very well, as industry could tackle the widening North-South divide between income and opportunities.

The Premio Basilicata literary prize’s winners we mentioned above are further proof that at least a section of Italy’s more informed public opinion is aware of all this (Bricco’s book about Olivetti also includes some incredibly interesting pages about the company’s investments in Pozzuoli as well as notions that, from Ivrea, aspire to develop the South’s economy and expertise). In fact, if we must think in terms of sustainable, environmental, social, economic and cultural development, then we also need to think more critically and proactively about industry as a driving force that generates employment, income and wealth. A process of change that should also include agriculture, tourism and health. A kind of “metamorphosis”, almost: from an embittered South currently relying on welfare assistance and warped decisions such as the “citizenship income” (which neither boosts employment nor adequately addresses the region’s widespread needs and poverty) and Neo-Bourbon nostalgia, to a South acquiring a leading role in manufacturing processes, part of the European recovery context and embodying the response to the Mediterranean region’s newly rediscovered geopolitical central position.

A South that, basically, could thrive on manufacturing, the market, merit (where ‘merit’ is the reward of initiative, creativity, the quality of a job well done).

Here’s why, then, it makes sense to talk about “factories” – or, even better, “neo-factories” – manufacturers where high-tech solutions, production, research, services and logistics combine with regional expertise and scientific innovation. All qualities that the South, over the years, has brilliantly displayed.

Lately, the attention that large and medium companies – Google and Accenture, Apple and Microsoft, KPMG and Bosch, Pirelli and Bip, STM and Technoprobe, and so on – are paying to young women and men in the South has been featuring in economic news, a process led by the digital economy and the spread of Artificial Intelligence.

Thus, even if ISTAT data show a widening in the North-South divide, lack of investments, brain drain, material and intellectual impoverishment, the challenge to overturn this situation is still on – and factories are of the essence, precisely because they’re a good thing. For the South of Italy, too.