Industry, culture, innovation
The story of Finmeccanica-Leonardo, the group epitomising Italian industry and excellence
Technical and manufacturing skills, ingenuity and science, technology and innovation, and, further, a taste for beauty and a culture able to look beyond – unparalleled Italian industry, though with its many contradictions and inefficiencies. This is what Paolo Bricco narrates in his latest book: Leonardo. Motore industriale e frontiera tecnologica dell’Italia (Leonardo. Italy’s industrial driving force and technological frontier), only recently published.
Bricco narrates, with a journalist’s flare and a historian’s exactness, the story – spanning several decades – of Finmeccanica, founded in 1948 and renamed Leonardo in 2016, starting from a premise stated in the very first pages: “20th-century Italian history features three invariable traits: a deeply embedded attitude for metamorphosis, a compulsion towards innovation, a concealed yet explicit vocation for beauty. Leonardo’s
lengthy history (…) embodies the combination of these three elements,” hence, “the individual for the whole. The whole for the individual. Leonardo is Italy. Italy is Leonardo”. An industrial and economic Italy, at any rate, which is the one Bricco narrates through the life stages of Finmeccanica-Leonardo, a group whose corporate size has always been large and whose own production culture has always distinguished its development, vicissitudes, successes and failures.
As such, Finmeccanica-Leonardo also came to represent an economic policy that shaped post-war Italy, for better or worse, and that continues to denote a considerable slice of Italian industry. As Bricco’s work explains, the public economy – of which this group was, and still is, a key element – had to meet the needs of Italy as a system, as well as to tackle the dynamics of international markets. Above all, however, and looking beyond the single sectors, Finmeccanica-Leonardo has always succeeded in keeping Italy at the edge of the technological frontier, shifting from manufacturing to cutting-edge technological and scientific skills.
Bricco’s narration is subdivided into well-defined sections: the economics of reconstruction and peace, the economic boom and Alfa Romeo, the energy crisis and Ansaldo, civil and military aviation, and space.
It certainly is a complex, often contradictory, difficult and multifaceted yet constantly fascinating story the one that Bricco tells us in a little over 200 pages. It is a future-oriented story that has been built, thanks to Leonardo’s extensive experience, on solid foundations, unique skills and know-how – Paolo Bricco’s book helps readers better comprehend all of this, as well as the particular corporate culture that derived from it.
Leonardo. Motore industriale e frontiera tecnologica dell’Italia (Leonardo. Italy’s industrial driving force and technological frontier)
Paolo Bricco
Il Mulino, 2023
The story of Finmeccanica-Leonardo, the group epitomising Italian industry and excellence
Technical and manufacturing skills, ingenuity and science, technology and innovation, and, further, a taste for beauty and a culture able to look beyond – unparalleled Italian industry, though with its many contradictions and inefficiencies. This is what Paolo Bricco narrates in his latest book: Leonardo. Motore industriale e frontiera tecnologica dell’Italia (Leonardo. Italy’s industrial driving force and technological frontier), only recently published.
Bricco narrates, with a journalist’s flare and a historian’s exactness, the story – spanning several decades – of Finmeccanica, founded in 1948 and renamed Leonardo in 2016, starting from a premise stated in the very first pages: “20th-century Italian history features three invariable traits: a deeply embedded attitude for metamorphosis, a compulsion towards innovation, a concealed yet explicit vocation for beauty. Leonardo’s
lengthy history (…) embodies the combination of these three elements,” hence, “the individual for the whole. The whole for the individual. Leonardo is Italy. Italy is Leonardo”. An industrial and economic Italy, at any rate, which is the one Bricco narrates through the life stages of Finmeccanica-Leonardo, a group whose corporate size has always been large and whose own production culture has always distinguished its development, vicissitudes, successes and failures.
As such, Finmeccanica-Leonardo also came to represent an economic policy that shaped post-war Italy, for better or worse, and that continues to denote a considerable slice of Italian industry. As Bricco’s work explains, the public economy – of which this group was, and still is, a key element – had to meet the needs of Italy as a system, as well as to tackle the dynamics of international markets. Above all, however, and looking beyond the single sectors, Finmeccanica-Leonardo has always succeeded in keeping Italy at the edge of the technological frontier, shifting from manufacturing to cutting-edge technological and scientific skills.
Bricco’s narration is subdivided into well-defined sections: the economics of reconstruction and peace, the economic boom and Alfa Romeo, the energy crisis and Ansaldo, civil and military aviation, and space.
It certainly is a complex, often contradictory, difficult and multifaceted yet constantly fascinating story the one that Bricco tells us in a little over 200 pages. It is a future-oriented story that has been built, thanks to Leonardo’s extensive experience, on solid foundations, unique skills and know-how – Paolo Bricco’s book helps readers better comprehend all of this, as well as the particular corporate culture that derived from it.
Leonardo. Motore industriale e frontiera tecnologica dell’Italia (Leonardo. Italy’s industrial driving force and technological frontier)
Paolo Bricco
Il Mulino, 2023