The patience of winners
A recently published book offers an analysis of Italy’s situation and suggestions on which paths to undertake to reset the country
Italy – a winner or a loser? A country of triumphs or a country of failures? The debate on Italy’s situation and economy increasingly swings between these two diametrically opposed views. Historical legacies, distorted – or at least biased – views, images adjusted through particular filters, narratives skewed by biased goals – all these reflect an inadequate portrayal of reality and, above all, concerning prospects for the future. It is a matter of culture, too, at all levels – and it needs a reset. The recently published L’eccellenza non basta (Excellence is not enough), Paolo Manfredi’s latest book, revolves around these core considerations.
Manfredi has been studying the bonds between digital media, territorial systems and SMEs for over twenty years, and in the first pages he sketches a portrait of Italy as a “Tired country, its fabric a little tattered, speckled with wonder. In these times of permanent crisis, Italy is certainly not the only country suffering from less than brilliant circumstances, yet it is the main Western country that, for over 30 years now, has given the impression it has left its future behind.” It is also a country weighed down “by unresolved issues and new burdens, whose pressure seems likely to increase” and in which “reminders of its excellence, used for a long time now to gloss over its challenges, are no longer sufficient: people are increasingly less engaged in the country’s collective fate, the community is older and tired, and struggles to create new excellence.” In other words, despite its undeniable strengths, Italy nowadays appears like a country getting progressively older, with its few young people ill-treated by a struggling education system, increasingly relying on the guaranteed income from what it still manages to sell. Quite the opposite, then, of a country that has made its own fortune and created top-quality brands – which have, however, progressively left behind the regional, cultural and local environment from which they arose, or, if still there, have been focusing on external markets rather than their internal one. The latter phenomenon no longer affects enterprises only, but also families, professionals, students, and even entire territories.
What can be done then? Manfredi identifies two possible paths. The first entails letting excellence prosper, with no care for the rest (territories, people, enterprises), leaving it all to waste away. The second consists in making the effort to build a more lenient, or ‘patient’, circular economy based on innovation, renewed skills, work and biodiversity, so as to focus and galvanise all that energy currently being scattered and squandered away – the energy of artisans, entrepreneurs, councils, cooperatives, farmers, communities and individuals who are keeping together, and alive, the Italian social and economic fabric, in order to design a more inclusive, innovative and future-oriented country.
Manfredi explains all this in little less than 150 clear and comprehensible pages, first describing the world surrounding Italy, then the “great future we have left behind”, and finally outlining the two goals we could attain.
All in all, Paolo Manfredi’s book is infused with the optimism arising from knowing that there are great issues to be solved, yet also from the awareness that we do have the strength to solve them, leading readers to embrace the notion that we should not merely give in to decline, but build a customised economy to suit all of us.
L’eccellenza non basta. L’economia paziente che serve all’Italia (Excellence is not enough. The patient economy that Italy needs)
Paolo Manfredi
Egea, 2023
A recently published book offers an analysis of Italy’s situation and suggestions on which paths to undertake to reset the country
Italy – a winner or a loser? A country of triumphs or a country of failures? The debate on Italy’s situation and economy increasingly swings between these two diametrically opposed views. Historical legacies, distorted – or at least biased – views, images adjusted through particular filters, narratives skewed by biased goals – all these reflect an inadequate portrayal of reality and, above all, concerning prospects for the future. It is a matter of culture, too, at all levels – and it needs a reset. The recently published L’eccellenza non basta (Excellence is not enough), Paolo Manfredi’s latest book, revolves around these core considerations.
Manfredi has been studying the bonds between digital media, territorial systems and SMEs for over twenty years, and in the first pages he sketches a portrait of Italy as a “Tired country, its fabric a little tattered, speckled with wonder. In these times of permanent crisis, Italy is certainly not the only country suffering from less than brilliant circumstances, yet it is the main Western country that, for over 30 years now, has given the impression it has left its future behind.” It is also a country weighed down “by unresolved issues and new burdens, whose pressure seems likely to increase” and in which “reminders of its excellence, used for a long time now to gloss over its challenges, are no longer sufficient: people are increasingly less engaged in the country’s collective fate, the community is older and tired, and struggles to create new excellence.” In other words, despite its undeniable strengths, Italy nowadays appears like a country getting progressively older, with its few young people ill-treated by a struggling education system, increasingly relying on the guaranteed income from what it still manages to sell. Quite the opposite, then, of a country that has made its own fortune and created top-quality brands – which have, however, progressively left behind the regional, cultural and local environment from which they arose, or, if still there, have been focusing on external markets rather than their internal one. The latter phenomenon no longer affects enterprises only, but also families, professionals, students, and even entire territories.
What can be done then? Manfredi identifies two possible paths. The first entails letting excellence prosper, with no care for the rest (territories, people, enterprises), leaving it all to waste away. The second consists in making the effort to build a more lenient, or ‘patient’, circular economy based on innovation, renewed skills, work and biodiversity, so as to focus and galvanise all that energy currently being scattered and squandered away – the energy of artisans, entrepreneurs, councils, cooperatives, farmers, communities and individuals who are keeping together, and alive, the Italian social and economic fabric, in order to design a more inclusive, innovative and future-oriented country.
Manfredi explains all this in little less than 150 clear and comprehensible pages, first describing the world surrounding Italy, then the “great future we have left behind”, and finally outlining the two goals we could attain.
All in all, Paolo Manfredi’s book is infused with the optimism arising from knowing that there are great issues to be solved, yet also from the awareness that we do have the strength to solve them, leading readers to embrace the notion that we should not merely give in to decline, but build a customised economy to suit all of us.
L’eccellenza non basta. L’economia paziente che serve all’Italia (Excellence is not enough. The patient economy that Italy needs)
Paolo Manfredi
Egea, 2023