The story of a major company, told from the inside

Understanding the true nature of a company is certainly a complex task, but an important one to undertake when the tools are available, such as the corporate memoir. An excellent example of this genre is the recently published ‘Nel crepuscolo della Fiat, un’effimera farfalla. L’innovazione negli anni fra Romiti e Marchionne’ (In Fiat’s twilight years, a fleeting butterfly. Innovation in the years between Romiti and Marchionne) written by Giancarlo Michellone.
In fact, the author has experienced Fiat’s history from the inside over a long period of time. Michellone joined Fiat Auto to lead the development of ABS and went on to hold numerous roles within the company, eventually becoming managing director of Fiat’s research centre, the Centro Ricerche Fiat (CRF). As the book’s title suggests, he is portrayed as a butterfly stubbornly flying against the wind, determined to thrive against the backdrop of the company’s decline.
Readers are thus taken on a journey through some of Fiat’s most crucial years, from 1989 to 2006, beginning with an overview of the CRF’s working methods, moving on to how its work evolved in response to developments both within and outside the company, and concluding with the author’s own experience.
In the book, major corporate strategies are interwoven with personal stories: all of this serves to provide a better and more thorough understanding of how a particular culture of manufacturing and industrial research can be intertwined with events that, on the face of it, seem to have little to do with that same way of thinking.
In the final pages of the book, Giancarlo Michellone writes: ‘I believe that for every business, the true objectives are to fulfil its economic and social role during its fleeting existence, like that of a butterfly, and, very importantly, to continue generating new ideas, testing them in practice and passing them on to people who are already trained or yet to be trained, equipping them with ethics and skills, both to extend the life of the business and to help other entrepreneurial ventures flourish, sharing the same values or even better ones.’

Nel crepuscolo della Fiat, un’effimera farfalla. L’innovazione negli anni fra Romiti e Marchionne
Giancarlo Michellone
Guerini NEXT, 2026