Words to talk about creativity, culture and industry and to increase the value of the Italian language in the world
“Italy must do Italy well”, the Symbola Foundation has long argued. And that means making the most its original ability to combine artistic creativity and economic enterprise, a taste for the “beautiful and well-made” and a passion for innovation, civic spirit and business quality, respect for the environment and market culture. In short, making space for a social capital interwoven with productivity and solidarity. This is what will be discussed at the annual Summer Seminar of Symbola, to be held in Mantua at the end of June, under the title “When Italy does Italy – Sustainability, Europe, the Future”, with economists, sociologists, politicians and the men and women at the top of those companies that, by making environmental and social sustainability a fundamental asset of their competitiveness, continue to occupy the best places on international markets, in niches of high quality and high added value.
In these difficult and uncertain times, when geopolitical crises are overwhelming traditional power structures and trade wars are undermining the chances of economic growth both globally and in many countries, redefining the reasons for competitiveness and reorganising value chains is an essential challenge, especially for Italian and European companies. The spread of AI (Artificial Intelligence) is helping to address this with some success. And the Leonardo supercomputing centre in Bologna, working with northern universities, business networks and public and private research centres, can make a difference to our advantage.
On the other hand, the Italian “polytechnic culture”, capable of finding virtuous syntheses between humanistic and scientific knowledge, from Leonardo da Vinci to Galileo Galilei, from the physicists of Via Panisperna to the chemists of Giulio Natta, Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1963, from Olivetti to Pirelli and Finmeccanica (now Leonardo), has always provided valuable guidance.
The question is simply: how to grow Made in Italy? And how can we build more economic value by leveraging the values cherished by both the markets and the stakeholders of our companies? Public and private investment in research and innovation, overcoming the traditional government-to-government tendency to spend less than the EU average on research and education. But also an ambitious strategy for cultural and industrial policy, which, in the context of European choices, promotes “Italian knowledge”, our culture (that “polytechnic” dimension mentioned above) and, of course, the spread of our language. Without nationalist rhetoric, but with an awareness of Mediterranean and European relations, of which a language like Italian is an exemplary product.
The latter aspect of linguistic and expressive values was the focus of the “States General of the Italian Language”, held in mid-April at the Maxxi in Rome on the initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Dante Alighieri Society. The debate also analysed issues related to Made in Italy and industrial activity.
How, then, can we make the most of Italian as a fundamental part of our social, cultural and economic capabilities? We can start with a quote from Gio Ponti, the great architect, planner and designer: “In Italy, art fell in love with industry. And that’s why industry is now a cultural phenomenon.” Ponti interpreted the country’s modernisation processes over a long period of the 20th century, as demonstrated by the Pirelli skyscraper, an icon of the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as a series of design and art objects that characterised the evolution of Italian taste and lifestyle and its international diffusion as a cultural and industrial product.
In other words, industrial culture, business culture, is an essential part of Italy’s cultural heritage. Historical roots and visions of the future. A rich, complex and varied heritage of creativity and original industriousness, imagination and production. Our literary and scientific language bears deep traces of this.
This heritage includes the great literature of Dante, Leopardi and Manzoni, to name but a few. The opera of Verdi and Rossini. The figurative arts, from Giotto to Michelangelo, from Caravaggio to De Chirico and Modigliani, mark the course of a millennium of masterpieces. The theatre of Goldoni and Pirandello. Cinema and photography. But also mathematics and physics, chemistry and architecture. The typographies and typefaces of Bodoni and Manuzio. And design and industry. A composite culture, rich in connections and relationships, with the ability to “make beautiful things that the world likes”. A civilisation of machines, labour, enterprise and creativity.
Art and industry, then. Understanding that to make industry is to make culture. And with a Made in Italy that has a strong industrial connotation, of great relevance, in the fields of mechanics and mechatronics, robotics, automotive, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, rubber and plastics, avionics and aerospace, shipbuilding and, of course, clothing, furnishings and agri-food. What words to use to tell this story?
An essential Latin lesson is worth remembering: “Nomina sunt consequentia rerum” (names are the consequences of things). So let us consider these things and think about Italian identity, knowing full well that “identity is not in the subject, but in the relationship”, as the great French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas astutely observed. Italian identity, multiple, dialectical, open, inclusive, lies in the sense of beauty, balance, measure, in a form that expresses a function and accompanies (often heralds) economic and social change, movement, transformation. Italian identity as metamorphosis and awareness of history. And an open eye on the future (as evidenced by the documents and objects preserved and valued by the more than 160 museums and historical company archives that are members of Museimpresa), a fresh approach, a presence on the markets.
So a sense of proportion, craftsmanship and quality.
Craftsmanship does not mean confining oneself to the horizon of the small workshop, however important it may be. Rather, in a broader sense, it refers to a method of craftsmanship, precision, attention to detail, a focus on the balance between form and function, a sense of caring for the product for the individual use of the individual customer. Craftsmanship applied to the large industrial process, to its most value-added niches.
And proportion? What does proportion mean? A sense of measure, balance, proportion and relationship is a fundamental part of beauty. To grasp this, one can go to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan and open the pages of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Atlantic Codex”. There, in more than a thousand leaves, are depictions of gears, digging and working machines, technical drawings that are striking for the beauty of the line and the refinement of the technology depicted, for the sense of balance and the power of precision, qualities that would later, centuries later, be translated into all that Italian manufacturing has been able to achieve over time and that it still knows how to achieve today. Thus, when Confindustria (the Italian Confederation of Industry) decided to open its representation in Washington in June 2023, it brought Leonardo’s drawings of the Atlantic Codex to exhibit in the public library of the US capital.
There is one word that is worth emphasising now: design, industrial design. Beauty and functionality linked to the quality of everyday life, consumption and the evolution of consumption. Aesthetics and use of industrially produced objects, the expression of the “polytechnic culture” we keep talking about. A culture of design and product and, now, of services. We could also say that the quality of Italian industry, its beauty, its unmistakable strength, the competitiveness of Made in Italy, deserves to be better represented than it has been. A narrative that more fully expresses our potential. Here, the flexibility, the richness, the musicality of language comes to our aid. The export of Made in Italy products and services and the widening of horizons for the study and use of the Italian language are part of the same cultural and civil development project.
But let us pause a moment longer on the word “beauty”. If it refers not only to a set of values and aesthetic factors, but also to elements of quality and functionality, then we discover that beauty, throughout the tradition, is also linked to the roots of our civic conscience and to that “civic economy” of which Antonio Genovesi, one of the leading Neapolitan Enlightenment theorists, considered by Adam Smith, the father of liberal economics, as “my master”, was an exemplary theorist. Productivity and awareness of community values, innovation and solidarity. Wealth building and improving the social balance.
The beauty of monuments, the beauty of landscapes, relationships, cities and neighbourhoods, the beauty of aggregation and production. But also the beauty of well-designed factories, the “beautiful factory”, i.e. well-designed, safe, welcoming, inclusive, sustainable. Italian industry has created and continues to create and develop “beautiful factories” where it is pleasant to work and where production is better and of higher quality. It is a lesson in experience and design skills. And reasoning about our words for manufacturing quality is not only an economic task, but a cultural and civic one. A historical legacy and a project for the future.
“Italy must do Italy well”, the Symbola Foundation has long argued. And that means making the most its original ability to combine artistic creativity and economic enterprise, a taste for the “beautiful and well-made” and a passion for innovation, civic spirit and business quality, respect for the environment and market culture. In short, making space for a social capital interwoven with productivity and solidarity. This is what will be discussed at the annual Summer Seminar of Symbola, to be held in Mantua at the end of June, under the title “When Italy does Italy – Sustainability, Europe, the Future”, with economists, sociologists, politicians and the men and women at the top of those companies that, by making environmental and social sustainability a fundamental asset of their competitiveness, continue to occupy the best places on international markets, in niches of high quality and high added value.
In these difficult and uncertain times, when geopolitical crises are overwhelming traditional power structures and trade wars are undermining the chances of economic growth both globally and in many countries, redefining the reasons for competitiveness and reorganising value chains is an essential challenge, especially for Italian and European companies. The spread of AI (Artificial Intelligence) is helping to address this with some success. And the Leonardo supercomputing centre in Bologna, working with northern universities, business networks and public and private research centres, can make a difference to our advantage.
On the other hand, the Italian “polytechnic culture”, capable of finding virtuous syntheses between humanistic and scientific knowledge, from Leonardo da Vinci to Galileo Galilei, from the physicists of Via Panisperna to the chemists of Giulio Natta, Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1963, from Olivetti to Pirelli and Finmeccanica (now Leonardo), has always provided valuable guidance.
The question is simply: how to grow Made in Italy? And how can we build more economic value by leveraging the values cherished by both the markets and the stakeholders of our companies? Public and private investment in research and innovation, overcoming the traditional government-to-government tendency to spend less than the EU average on research and education. But also an ambitious strategy for cultural and industrial policy, which, in the context of European choices, promotes “Italian knowledge”, our culture (that “polytechnic” dimension mentioned above) and, of course, the spread of our language. Without nationalist rhetoric, but with an awareness of Mediterranean and European relations, of which a language like Italian is an exemplary product.
The latter aspect of linguistic and expressive values was the focus of the “States General of the Italian Language”, held in mid-April at the Maxxi in Rome on the initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Dante Alighieri Society. The debate also analysed issues related to Made in Italy and industrial activity.
How, then, can we make the most of Italian as a fundamental part of our social, cultural and economic capabilities? We can start with a quote from Gio Ponti, the great architect, planner and designer: “In Italy, art fell in love with industry. And that’s why industry is now a cultural phenomenon.” Ponti interpreted the country’s modernisation processes over a long period of the 20th century, as demonstrated by the Pirelli skyscraper, an icon of the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as a series of design and art objects that characterised the evolution of Italian taste and lifestyle and its international diffusion as a cultural and industrial product.
In other words, industrial culture, business culture, is an essential part of Italy’s cultural heritage. Historical roots and visions of the future. A rich, complex and varied heritage of creativity and original industriousness, imagination and production. Our literary and scientific language bears deep traces of this.
This heritage includes the great literature of Dante, Leopardi and Manzoni, to name but a few. The opera of Verdi and Rossini. The figurative arts, from Giotto to Michelangelo, from Caravaggio to De Chirico and Modigliani, mark the course of a millennium of masterpieces. The theatre of Goldoni and Pirandello. Cinema and photography. But also mathematics and physics, chemistry and architecture. The typographies and typefaces of Bodoni and Manuzio. And design and industry. A composite culture, rich in connections and relationships, with the ability to “make beautiful things that the world likes”. A civilisation of machines, labour, enterprise and creativity.
Art and industry, then. Understanding that to make industry is to make culture. And with a Made in Italy that has a strong industrial connotation, of great relevance, in the fields of mechanics and mechatronics, robotics, automotive, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, rubber and plastics, avionics and aerospace, shipbuilding and, of course, clothing, furnishings and agri-food. What words to use to tell this story?
An essential Latin lesson is worth remembering: “Nomina sunt consequentia rerum” (names are the consequences of things). So let us consider these things and think about Italian identity, knowing full well that “identity is not in the subject, but in the relationship”, as the great French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas astutely observed. Italian identity, multiple, dialectical, open, inclusive, lies in the sense of beauty, balance, measure, in a form that expresses a function and accompanies (often heralds) economic and social change, movement, transformation. Italian identity as metamorphosis and awareness of history. And an open eye on the future (as evidenced by the documents and objects preserved and valued by the more than 160 museums and historical company archives that are members of Museimpresa), a fresh approach, a presence on the markets.
So a sense of proportion, craftsmanship and quality.
Craftsmanship does not mean confining oneself to the horizon of the small workshop, however important it may be. Rather, in a broader sense, it refers to a method of craftsmanship, precision, attention to detail, a focus on the balance between form and function, a sense of caring for the product for the individual use of the individual customer. Craftsmanship applied to the large industrial process, to its most value-added niches.
And proportion? What does proportion mean? A sense of measure, balance, proportion and relationship is a fundamental part of beauty. To grasp this, one can go to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan and open the pages of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Atlantic Codex”. There, in more than a thousand leaves, are depictions of gears, digging and working machines, technical drawings that are striking for the beauty of the line and the refinement of the technology depicted, for the sense of balance and the power of precision, qualities that would later, centuries later, be translated into all that Italian manufacturing has been able to achieve over time and that it still knows how to achieve today. Thus, when Confindustria (the Italian Confederation of Industry) decided to open its representation in Washington in June 2023, it brought Leonardo’s drawings of the Atlantic Codex to exhibit in the public library of the US capital.
There is one word that is worth emphasising now: design, industrial design. Beauty and functionality linked to the quality of everyday life, consumption and the evolution of consumption. Aesthetics and use of industrially produced objects, the expression of the “polytechnic culture” we keep talking about. A culture of design and product and, now, of services. We could also say that the quality of Italian industry, its beauty, its unmistakable strength, the competitiveness of Made in Italy, deserves to be better represented than it has been. A narrative that more fully expresses our potential. Here, the flexibility, the richness, the musicality of language comes to our aid. The export of Made in Italy products and services and the widening of horizons for the study and use of the Italian language are part of the same cultural and civil development project.
But let us pause a moment longer on the word “beauty”. If it refers not only to a set of values and aesthetic factors, but also to elements of quality and functionality, then we discover that beauty, throughout the tradition, is also linked to the roots of our civic conscience and to that “civic economy” of which Antonio Genovesi, one of the leading Neapolitan Enlightenment theorists, considered by Adam Smith, the father of liberal economics, as “my master”, was an exemplary theorist. Productivity and awareness of community values, innovation and solidarity. Wealth building and improving the social balance.
The beauty of monuments, the beauty of landscapes, relationships, cities and neighbourhoods, the beauty of aggregation and production. But also the beauty of well-designed factories, the “beautiful factory”, i.e. well-designed, safe, welcoming, inclusive, sustainable. Italian industry has created and continues to create and develop “beautiful factories” where it is pleasant to work and where production is better and of higher quality. It is a lesson in experience and design skills. And reasoning about our words for manufacturing quality is not only an economic task, but a cultural and civic one. A historical legacy and a project for the future.