Research conducted in Europe and in the USA indicates the importance of cooperation between companies, but also the need for balance between the risks and the advantages of networks

The creation of collaborative networks is definitely one of the tools for the success of companies. Together, people work better, markets that are further away can be reached, more efficiency is created, people are more effective. You need to know how, however.

“Collaboration and collaboration risk in small and middle-size technological enterprises”, a piece of research written by multiple authors and recently published on LogForum – Scientific Journal of Logistics, is useful to read to understand more about the alchemy required to set up profitable collaborations between small and medium-sized enterprises in the technological industry.

Conducted by Karol Marek Klimczak (from the University of Navarra, in Pamplona), Wojciech Machowiak (from the Poznan School of Logistics, in Poznan), Iwona Staniec (from the Lodz University of Technology, in Lodz), and Yochanan Shachmurove (from City College of The City University of New York), the research reflects on the importance of collaboration and cooperation between SMEs operating in the extensive technological segment. The ability to collaborate is the idea underpinning the investigation, and it represents a particular aspect of the culture of such businesses. After reviewing literature on the subject, the work attempts to identify the areas of risk in collaboration activities. Cooperating in fact means pooling together abilities and skills, putting yourself out there and also opening up your company to others (which may be or become competitors). Subsequently, the research counts the risks connected to the actual conducting of cooperative activities.

Subsequently, the research examines the results of the work carried out in 2016 on over 300 small and medium-sized technological enterprises (SMTEs). In this case, the authors explain, “the objective was to analyse the collaboration environment of SMEs, their approach to collaboration and the perception of collaboration, of problems and of risks”. The topic of technological cooperation is therefore investigated in detail and analysed not only from the point of view of relations between SMEs but also between these and large companies.

The results of this work – which among other things was written via an interesting collaboration between research bodies situated in multiple countries: Poland, Spain, USA -, confirm the validity of the strategy that drives companies to cooperate to achieve better results, but accentuate the focus that must be placed in the assessment of risks and in the ability to lend skills and capabilities for the benefit of the entire network .

Collaboration and collaboration risk in small and middle-size technological enterprises

Karol Marek Klimczak, Wojciech Machowiak, Iwona Staniec, Yochanan Shachmurove

LogForum – Scientific Journal of Logistics, 2017, 13 (2)

“The theatre is the place where a freely gathered community reveals itself”. This sentence was uttered by Paolo Grassi, the founder of the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, one of the stars of the best 20^th Century Italian culture. And this is exactly the lesson on the words to say, listen to and greet, on the “truth” of a play, which makes up the hinge-pin of the decision by Assolombarda to analyse its own activities right there, in Piccolo Teatro, on Thursday morning, with a meeting about “Milan, the Future”. It is obviously not a conference. It is instead a representation, in a dramatised form, of experiences and ideas that involve the city that attempts to look at its past and to reason on its destiny and attempts to build a better one for the younger generations. The Piccolo Teatro in Milan, ever since it was established in 1947, counts some of the main bourgeois entrepreneur families as its founders and supporters (Alberto and Piero Pirelli, first and foremost). Thus Milan also confirms its identity as an entrepreneurial and cultural city, with synergies and partnerships that are still topical. Milan is “The rising city” painted by Umberto Boccioni at the most dynamic moment of the turn of the 20th Century (the original is at the New York Moma, the preparatory sketch at the Brera Art Gallery: “the fruit of our industrial times”, to use the author’s own words). The metropolis of continuous transformations. The most open and European of Italian cities.

So, the company takes to the stage. It feels at home in a theatre (and the Milanese theatre, in many of its dimensions, knows how to be a good, efficient business). It tells itself “at” the theatre. It uses dramatic language. It moves according to an original collective imagination, for the economic world. It innovates in its very representation. Lights that mark presences and movements. Pages of literature and science transformed by actors of the Piccolo Teatro into a play. Entrepreneurs and personalities from the institutions and culture who offer to testify to  “doing” and to “designing”. Music played on the piano by Enrico Intra, which gives rhythm to the various acts of the play. Fading images amid great figurative art, architectural design, digital forms of new industrial technology, networks and connection points, acute views of social dimensions. In fact, a representation of a vital community, which knows its history and represents the strength of its transformations. Besides, this is in fact the profound sense of being a company in the community: awareness and responsibility of innovation.

Milan’s identity, open, multiple, conflicting and concurrently inclusive (“You become Milanese”, is the teaching of Carlo Castellaneta, an ultra-Milanese writer, with a Milanese mother and a father from Puglia) is told by Cristina Messa, Rector of Bicocca University (with its ten and more universities and 200 thousand students, Milan is the place par excellence where training and research meet up, where human capital and quality social capital are built). And the metropolis could be interpreted according to an acronym that is dear to Assolombarda, i.e. STEAM, the initials for science, technology, environment but also energy from the green economy, arts and manufacturing: converging aspects of corporate culture, of “polytechnic culture”, where Milan has a very Italian and very international dimension.

This is proven by the testimonies of Sergio Dompé (cutting-edge pharmaceutical) on scientific research and life sciences; of Enrico Cereda (chairman of IBM) on hi tech innovation, digital services and the smart city; of Pietro Modiano (chairman of Sea) on material and immaterial infrastructure that makes Milan welcoming and capable of drawing people and international investments and stay connected to Europe and to the world; of Carlotta De Bevilacqua (Artemide) on humanities-related know-how that gives rise to hugely original culture in design, fashion and other dimensions of made in Italy which Milan is the capital of; of Marco Tronchetti Provera (CEO of Pirelli) on the transformations of digital manufacturing, on the contemporary synthesis of industry, services, big data, in a stimulating and competitive world such as Industry 4.0. (on manufacturing and social transformations, the Pirelli Foundation and the Piccolo Teatro had organised together the “Settimo – La fabbrica e il lavoro” (Settimo – Factory and work) performance in 2012, directed by Serena Sinigaglia: a tale of the evolution of the industrial pole of Settimo Torinese, with positive feedback from both critics and the audience).

In the testimonies of these five entrepreneurs and managers, on stage at the Piccolo Teatro, there is the particularly Milanese synthesis of design culture and product culture. To “do, and to do well”. And to tell it. The event is to conclude with talks by the Mayor of Milan, Beppe Sala, representing the institutions who know how to use past and future, proud to belong and ambitious to draw attention; by the chairman of Assolombarda Gianfelice Rocca, drawing to the end of a four-year mandate distinguished by fifty projects (for the most part already concluded and others destined to carry on with time) dedicated to “making Milan fly so Italy can fly”; by cardinal Francesco Scola, who has just received a thrilling visit by Pope Francis in Milan and the author of a book which has just recently been published, entitled “Postcristianesimo? Il malessere e le speranze dell’Occidente” (Post-Christianity. Disquiet and the hopes of the West), attempting to catch a glimpse of “the common good in the plural society” and to reason on welcoming and on the values of different cultures, on “knowing how to see others beyond the Narcissus who is within us”.

They are complex yet unavoidable challenges, specifically for a metropolis such as Milan, which has always been open, engaged in combining competitiveness and solidarity in an original way and not without contradiction and contrast. To do culture, as a tool for growth that is not just economic but also social. And, without boasting, to account for it. Grassi’s words on the theatre as a “place where a freely gathered community reveals itself” ring true.

A book that was just recently translated into Italian tackles the topic of management within modern manufacturing organisations in a different and unorthodox way

A company is built with people. And therefore with their ideas, which are not simply those of the entrepreneur but also of those who, beside him and around him, build and make the manufacturing organisation thrive. So it is not just down to the machines. If one accepts this concept, one also needs to realise that the essence of management  in fact lies in the ability to relate to others.

“Il management. Approcci, culture, etica” (Management. Approaches, cultures, ethics) by Ann L. Cunliffe in fact starts with this very same series of considerations.  “Management is a relational, reflective and ethical activity. It is not simply what is done, but it is essentially who we are and how we relate to others”, explains the author at the beginning of her book. She teaches Organisation at Bradford University based on her lengthy experience in company management  and organisation.

In fact the book has two pillars: it focuses on the responsibilities of managers and on their position within the company. For Cunliffe, it is necessary to review the theories and the practical side of management by comparing them with different aspects of social activity which have hitherto been excluded from studies and from management practices.

The book then simply covers these topics over less than two hundred pages. Cunliffe begins by reasoning about management and “managerialism” and then addresses the topics tied to communication of managers , their language and the figure of relationship managers. The way to distinguish this part of the book is summed up in the contents of the chapter sub-heading: “Non è quello che ho detto…” (That’s not what I said). Subsequently the volume poses the question: who are managers? Followed by the question of who the people who work as managers really are, attempting to understand their nature, their weaknesses and their strengths. Cunliffe, following the theory based on people and therefore on relationships, poses the problem of “managing culture” and therefore “managing heart, mind and soul” and then in the last chapter covers the topic dedicated to managing ethical and “proper” organisations.

Useful although in part complex and convoluted is the Foreword in the Italian edition of the book (“Orografie organizzative e approccio critico al management” – Organisational orographies and critical approach to management) by Giuseppe Scaratti whose aim is to position Cunliffe’s work within studies on management.

In any case, the literary effort of Cunliffe, who is also a contract professor at Cattolica University, is worth reading attentively, and perhaps re-reading after comparing the “practice” of management  with what she has written in her book.

Il management. Approcci, culture, etica (Management. Approaches, cultures, ethics)

Ann L. Cunliffe

Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2017

A recently published piece of research tells of a craft-based product used as a paradigm for Italian know-how

The culture of a region and of the companies based there can also be seen in the objects it produces. It is the materialisation of this know-how that becomes a personal memory and a collective story. And it is through objects that the most part of corporate culture travels. Also through products that apparently look insignificant. Reading about them and learning their stories is useful for everyone. As in the case of the Florentine straw hat.

The particular story of the straw hat in Tuscany – which also illustrates a particular manufacturing culture -, was told by Pietro Meloni (from the University of Siena) in his “L’immaginario del made in Italy: la biografia culturale del cappello di paglia fiorentino” (The collective imagination of made in Italy: the cultural biography of the Florentine straw hat) which was recently published and is part scientific research about local corporate culture and part ethnographic and historic tale of past events, yet where many roots of modern plants are deeply entrenched.

Meloni explains that the concept behind this work is “a reflection on the topics of heritage, of made in Italy and mass consumption”; yet in actual fact the topic is broader and in fact touches on all the fields of entrepreneurship deeply rooted in the region, of know-how combined with knowing how to be enterprising, of the taste and growth of companies which went on to make Italian style history.

Again Meloni explains all this stating that the purpose of his work is in fact to “highlight how today, in the world of manufacturing and mass consumption, resorting to aspects such as material culture, the craftsmanship skills of artisans, the rarity of the products used in the production of objects which can still be defined as goods, are fundamental as distinguishing elements that appeal to the mass market. In a society where manufacturing competition forces companies to close down, to move their production plants to other countries, the reconstruction of a cultural biography that testifies to the ‘excellence’ of craft-based manufacturing has become to all extents and purposes a marketing strategy, no less so than the advertising by major global multinationals”.

Hence the story of the Florentine straw hat made between Signa, Lastra a Signa and Campi Bisenzio on the outskirts of Florence. The story of the companies that used to produce it in the past and that continue to produce it to this day, of the markets conquered and the customers who, by using it, have made this product famous all over the world. And also the story of the technological evolution of the product and of the cultural elements that it has created and that it still fosters today.

Reading Meloni’s work is quick and easy, spanning manufacturing organisation, timing and history.

L’immaginario del made in Italy: la biografia culturale del cappello di paglia fiorentino (The collective imagination of made in Italy: the cultural biography of the Florentine straw hat)

Pietro Meloni (University of Siena)

Palaver 6 n.s. (2017), n.1, 30-74

The European path is a positive one, from the point of view of Italian industry. And even the more recent season, that of the Euro, has stimulated the best part of our businesses to reinforce their competitiveness: “Without the doping of the devaluation of the Lira, a tough selection and the obligation to compete on quality”, as documented by Paolo Bricco on Il Sole24Ore (25th March). Now that the EU has celebrated its sixty-year anniversary since the Treaty of Rome, with a joint declaration by all 27 member-States (the solemn signing took place in Campidoglio last Saturday), it is attempting to continue along the difficult road to its relaunching, and it acknowledges itself as “a community of peace, freedom, democracy, founded on human rights and the constitutional state” and as “a large economic power that can boast unrivalled levels of social protection and welfare”, Italian companies know they can continue to grow while looking at the EU as a very tough “domestic market” – that is true – yet still an “open” market, and at the global markets, with the strength of the political engagements of the same EU and its members against protectionism. Indeed, the final document talks of a “multilateral system, free and equal trade and a positive global climate policy”.

If one interprets correctly the rhetoric of the declarations and the caution of diplomatic language, this very excerpt says to the economic world that European policies will not obey the White House diktat of Donald Trump on “America first”, the walls, the crisis of the treaties (starting with the intention to withdraw from NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement: a large number of Italian and European companies have major production plants in Mexico, specifically to distribute to the US market) and they will do everything in their power for talks during the next G20 summits to re-address the “fight against protectionism” and “environmental and social sustainability”, President Trump’s two “black beasts”.

There is another important excerpt from the Rome Declaration: “A stable and even stronger single currency”. So many years on from its creation, 1st January 1999 and despite the cascade of criticism (many ideologies, of the worst populism, including within European countries themselves) and genuine crisis points, the Euro remains a valid point of reference. And the work carried out by the ECB led by Mario Draghi continues to be a precious heritage and a valid tool for balanced development, not a limitation to break down owing to unlikely disastrous returns to national currencies.

Italian industry, during the second half of the 20th Century, has grown as an integral part of Europe. The economic boom of the 1950s and 60s was founded on the dynamism of manufacturing companies that focused on exports, with the open horizons of the European single market. It withstood the oil shocks of ’73 and ’78 and the social tension of the “years of lead”, learning to innovate, launching new cultures and corporate organisations (the “districts”) and nevertheless it continued to look to foreign markets. It caught the “competitive devaluation” bug in the Eighties and early Nineties (the perverse circuit that recovered the loss of competitiveness with the fragility of the currency, using prices kept low as leverage). And it recovered when, once the devaluation-inflation game had altogether broken, the European agreements (the limitations of the currency System, the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 and then the birth of the Euro) forced companies to compete not solely on the price but on quality as well. The superior quality of excellent manufacturing that is Italian manufacturing, widespread across the country and open to the world, backed by a polytechnic culture of “know-how and expertise”.

“The Euro has modelled industry”, states Il Sole24Ore, demonstrating, based on documents from Oxford Economics, that we would not have grown at all if we had continued to use the Lira or a weak Euro. Italy has lost jobs in the “low skilled”, low quality sectors, but it has gained ground in the “high skilled” and “medium skilled” sectors, developing mechanics into meccatronics, basic chemistry into top-quality manufacturing, pharmaceuticals into a manufacturing system on a par with the best performing international “life sciences”, furnishings thanks to design and the food industry towards distinctive positive characteristics of the “Mediterranean diet” in a sought-after healthy “lifestyle”. Current competitiveness, which can withstand the toughest competition and can look to the future with worry but not with despair.

This positive process has been a selective one. Only 20% of our companies are part of it. Yet another 30% are firmly on the road to innovation. Excellent quality manufacturing. Which can continue to have room in the main international chains of value, acting as a key player in the “digital” and “industry 4.0” challenges and as a manufacturing system featuring innovative services.

Italy remains the second largest European country in this Europe seeking recovery, right behind Germany which sooner or later will have to open up and seriously drive European industry. The Euro and the intelligence of our human capital and of social capital will be used as leverage. Competition focuses in fact on superior quality. And the fanciful ideas of “going back to the Lira” or of using a “dual currency” are only useful for propaganda in talks filled with rhetoric, not with facts and figures.

The EU of the Rome Declaration, despite the crises and falls, remains a current affair on the horizon. For Italian industry too.

A recently published book describes an unusual and highly original approach to organisation, in that it uniquely tries to combine production efficiency with human environment.

The structure given to an organisation to turn it into a business reflects many things. The business is the image, in another form, of the person who created it and the people who manage it. It is also as much the product of external influences as of internal evolution. It changes, evolves, mutates, grows, and every now and then, it also implodes. It is essential to understand its underlying structure and, above all, how it could potentially evolve. There are numerous ways of gaining such insights. Especially if some of them are readily available for use, like Federico Laloux’s book “Reinventing organisations” with its intriguing subtitle: “How to create organisations modelled on the next stage of human knowledge.”

The book’s basic tenet is one which many business leaders and managers probably share and practice already. The way in which organisations are currently being managed is increasingly anachronistic. Deep down, we know we can do more and better. We all want workplaces which have a soul, we want more genuine relationships, a deeper sense of community and a significant goal to pursue. The problem is how to get them while reconciling healthy balance sheets with happy workplaces.
Laloux presents his take on the issue, and it takes the form of a journey through successive stages (which in turn feature a series of steps associated with different colours) to arrive at a condition he calls Teal, again based on colours indicating specific predispositions and behaviours. Readers are introduced to a dimension of business organisation and the management of people within it that is very different from any other method they may have encountered. Laloux writes that the Teal approach to organisational structure is achieved when we “learn to detach from our egos. It is only when we look at our ego from a distance that we suddenly realize how our fears, ambitions, desires often govern our lives. We can learn to minimize our need for control, to seem like good people, and to be in good shape. If we are less tied to our egos, we no longer let fear control our lives. In the process, we open up space to hear the wisdom of other, deeper parts of ourselves. What takes the place of fear? The ability to trust in the richness of life.”
Laloux therefore taps into a full spectrum of human sciences, drawing on an immense and extremely useful toolbox, to discuss organisational structure and to fully understand behaviour within the organisation of production. The book begins by describing the evolution of organisations then goes on to look in detail at the structures, practices and culture of the Teal organisation, defining the necessary circumstances and ways of bringing it into being in every business. To close, the author presents the case of an Italian ICT company, Mondora di Morbengo, in the Valtellina area.
Frederic Laloux’s treatise is not an easy read nor one to be taken lightly; but those who do tackle it will undoubtedly experience a very new and original way of looking at and understanding organisational structure. Definitely worth reading. And reading again.

Reinventare le organizzazioni. Come creare organizzazioni ispirate al prossimo stadio della consapevolezza umana [Reinventing organisations. How to create organisations modelled on the next stage inb human knowledge.]
by Frederic Laloux
Guerini Next, 2016

The basic tenets of organisational welfare in a condensed series of studies and research projects

Organisation and business penetrate the lives of the people working in them for a large part of the year. This simple, ostensibly banal, statement is actually quite important because it points to how the organisation of production influences the lives of the people engaged within it. Indeed, it is from this core of thought that the complex theme of organisational welfare emerged. A culture within business culture, organisational welfare is now one of the defining activities of the image and content of business and managerial practice.

The journal entitled, “Organisational welfare. From theory to practice” , by several contributors and published by the Milan Order of Chartered Accountants and Auditors, is the perfect tool for understanding the issue better.

The underlying sense of the collection of research projects and in-depth studies presented in the journal emerges immediately from one of the passages in the presentation: “Businesses have an enormous influence on the social and psychological lives of the people who work in them, so big that numbers are no longer enough.”

Subsequent contributions all follow this lead. Starting from the story of organisational welfare and moving on to look in more detail at connections between the state and welfare, and therefore of statutory regulations. The second part of the journal then looks at the principles and methods to build a welfare plan that is both functional and efficient, starting from an understanding of workers’ actual needs and ending with tools to measure the success or failure of everything the organisation has done for the welfare of its workers.

“Organisational welfare. From theory to practice” has one fantastic thing about it: in just over one hundred pages, it sums up the key things we need to know about welfare without wasting time in conjectures which could distract from the main objective. The treatise is completed with a presentation of case studies on Luxottica and Ferrera.

The theme which emerges is an interesting but fascinating one for business leaders and managers, something which qualifies organisations and all their constituent parts and which must undoubtedly be tackled with an open mind and a brave heart. The journal ends on a beautiful note, with a consideration that is also a statement of fact: “Evolution has taken place, and it was exceptionally quick.”

Il welfare aziendale. Dalla teoria alla pratica [Organisational welfare. From theory to practice.]

AA.VV.

I Quaderni, Fondazione Dottori Commercialisti di Milano, 2017

High-tech competition in the knowledge economy era. On the European patent scene, Italy is growing more than France and Germany. Its most dynamic businesses are researching, innovating, and improving production and products. They are patenting, in other words. Leading the way are Ansaldo Energia and Pirelli.

Figures recently released for 2016 by the European Patent Office confirm the upward trend we also saw in 2015 (and discusse in our blog on 8 March 2016). A total of 4,166 patent applications were made, up 4.5% on the 3,986 submitted in 2015, which in itself was an improvement (+9.5%) on 2014. We are forging ahead, performing better than the EU average (-0.4%, with 159,000 applications compared with 160,000 in 2015). We are putting the years of stagnation behind us, years of scarce attention to patents, and therefore to research and innovation (even though Italian industry has always innovated more than official figures on R&D and patent investment actually show: business were innovating, making a name for themselves for quality and not price on highly competitive markets, but their achievements were not written into their balance sheets or confirmed in patents). This trend has finally been turned around and it deserves to be acknowledged. And discussed.

Let’s take a closer look at the figures. The more than four thousand patent applications in 2016 placed Italy second in Europe after Belgium, confirming the u-turn after dropping down back from 2012 to 2015. Accounting for 3% of all applications submitted, Italy ranked tenth among countries applying for patent protection (protection of creativity, stimulus to conduct new research). We are still too far down the table in terms of innovation quality, but still better than before.

The most dynamic country in terms of applications made was China (+24.8%) while the US dropped back slightly (-5.9%, but with 40,000 patent applications, this was still an outstanding achievement) but remained within the top five, along with Germany, Japan, France and Switzerland. “The 2016 results confirm Europe’s appeal as a global market leader in terms of innovation,” EPO (European Patent Office) president Benoît Battistelli said.

“In a rapidly changing economic and political context,” he continued,  “international businesses continued to apply for patents in Europe. While we are witnessing a sizeable increase in applications from Asia, European organisations are still driving renewal and change in domestic markets, proving their flexibility despite uncertain economic conditions.”

The sector breakdown makes interesting reading. Starting from the boom in transport, which has climbed up from third position in 2015. The automotive world, where Italy excels in the replacement parts sector, has had a positive influence: with an increase of 38%, it is the technological field which achieved the most visible increase, boosting Italy’s leadership at the global level. 4% of global “automotive” applications actually came from Italy.

In second place, with a 16% rise in 2016, was “goods movement” (packaging, transport systems, containers) followed by “special machinery” (+10%) then “medical technology” (+10%).

What about individual organisations? With 50 separate patent applications, Ansaldo Energia was the top-ranking Italian company with the greatest number of EPO applications. Pirelli ranked second (with 41 applications). Then came G.D. (35), Danieli (33) and Chiesi Farmaceutici (31). The overall most active companies were Fca-Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (75), Solvay Sa (72) and ST Microelectronics NV (69) who are not included in the Italian rankings because their legal headquarters are not in Italy (although several of their key plants and research centres are, especially Fca).

And the regions? Lombardy once again took first place in Italy, achieving 3% year-on-year growth and ranked 11th in Europe (still not competitive enough and to be improved, going by the deep-rooted strength of Bavaria, Baden Wuerttemberg, NordReno Westfalia and Ile di France, Europe’s innovating regions and benchmarks for innovation and competitiveness.)

Lombardy accounted for 34.5% of all requests submitted in Italy in 2016 (33% in 2015). It was followed by Emilia Romagna (16%) and Veneto (13%). The most significant differential was seen in Molise (+150%) and Abruzzo (+83.3%), although on a more limited basis, and in Liguria (+42%). As for city rankings, Milan lead the way, with 902 applications (+0.8%) ahead of Turin (up from 269 to 305, +13.4%), Bologna (from 206 to 292, +41.7%) and Rome (which inverted the trend, dropping from 232 to 185, -20.3%).

Milan’s record as a pioneering “locomotive” is a promising one, to be pursued further. It was built on a unique synergy between high and medium-tech manufacturing, innovative services, business finance, university excellence and public and private research centres (many with direct connections to manufacturing activities and high-quality services). Milan is a “smart city”. Milan is “STEAM”, the acronym introduced by Assolombarda, the association of Lombardy businesses, and which our readers will know stands for Science, Technology, Environment, Education, Arts and Manufacturing. Again and again Milan has proved its “polytechnic” culture, creating wealth and building a future.

A book that proposes an original route from unhappy factories to people-centred organisations.

An organisation is like a ship’s galley, not a nice place to work or to find yourself in.  The climate in factories or offices is sometimes the same. Feeling enslaved, we don’t go there happily and our output is low or provided unwillingly.   Situations such as these may be more common than you’d think nowadays.  Especially, and above all, in the industry 4.0 era.  In his recently published, “Dalla piramide al cerchio. La persona al centro dell’azienda”  [From the pyramid to the circle. The individual at the centre of the organisation] Guido Zaccarelli takes a pragmatic and structured approach to the complex and thorny comparison of organisations to ship’s galleys. His stated aim is to engender a more ethical organisational culture that puts the individual at the centre of an organisational eco-system with which he or she can identify and feel a sense of belonging.

The opening imagery is, nevertheless, the ship’s galley, which Zaccarelli uses to compare the gruelling labour of slaves at sea to that of workers on assembly lines.

He suggests that this unhappy situation could be turned around if management were to adopt an

organisational structure that were closer to the needs and desires of individuals, and banished demands made on workers to keep to the relentless pace of the assembly line to

cut costs and compete in global markets.

The concept of competitiveness itself is redefined, presented as the extent to which an organisation is able to create a climate in which people are empowered to share their ideas and their knowledge with those around them, in a circular rather than a hierarchical structure. Zaccarelli believes that a positive organisational climate motivates people to work towards, and identify with, a common organisational purpose. It paves the way for the creation of a happy workplace in which the deep and previously untapped resources of employees can be brought to the surface. Once visible, these forces can be harnessed and used to generate countless

intangible financial resources to be invested in training, research and development and to

raise skill and capability levels across the organisation. People will become wiser, happier and more content. Knowing that they are being respected, they will be more eager, proactive and willing to contribute.

Zaccarelli’s book is undoubtedly a visionary read. It raises questions that often prompt surprise to begin with, and takes the reader on a long and colourful journey that is full of complexity and not always immediately intelligible.  Yet, it is a book which must be read.  As you turn the last page, you may not fully understand or agree entirely with its premises, but it will definitely have helped to map out some previously unknown territory.

Dalla piramide al cerchio. La  persona al centro dell’azienda [From the pyramid to the circle. The individual at the centre of the organisation.]

Guido Zaccarelli

Franco Angeli, 2017

An early 20th century industrial machine, set against the glass, steel and cement of the offices in Pirelli’s ultra-modern headquarters. A mixer and a small calender a stone’s throw from high-tech screens, lab machinery and desks. Vestiges of a factory, in the contemporary space of a multinational industry. Not a monument but the memory of an extraordinarily contemporary culture. Pirelli has always been a factory at heart. Its strength, its wealth and its future all have factory origins. Even now, in times of great transformation, in which manufacturing is going digital, networks of robots and computers are playing key roles in production, labourers and technicians are mutating, skill-sets and responsibilities are increasing, and research and service labs are feeding into product structure in original ways. In times of Industry4.0 or digital manufacturing, as it’s also called these days. Factories they were and factories they remain, or neo-factories at the least. Transformed in an evolution that always lay in manufacturing’s future.

That’s why this machine is here, in the sweeping atrium of Pirelli’s Bicocca HQ, in front of the cooling tower, now an auditorium, meeting rooms and collective space, and just a few steps from the company library. It can be seen clearly from every office, all ten floors of them around three sides of the Tower, which has become an emblem for the changes taking place in Milan. It stands in this place as a reminder of the machine civilisation.  Not to mention the people tasked with operating them. A constantly innovative industrial and occupational culture.

The mixer-calender machine will be on display to the public on Saturday 4 March, as part of MuseoCity (a city-wide event involving museums, archives, heritage homes, workshops and artists, showcasing the role played in local culture and raising awareness of their outstanding cultural value) alongside a historical photograph: “Pirelli workers leaving the Via Ponte Seveso factory” by Luca Comerio, a photography and film-making pioneer. The work – staggeringly innovative for its time – is also of staggering proportions, measuring 245cm x 150cm and made using vanguard techniques. The Pirelli factory was innovative from its inception and innovative in its representation.  Moreover, it was located in a city at the forefront of early 20^th century European-looking innovation in Italy (a characteristic which metropolitan Milan still conserves in its business fabric).

Let’s take a closer look at the machine to get a better idea (information gathered by Daniele Pirola, from the Pirelli Foundation historical archives and the keepers of the memory of the old Pirelli plant in Via Brescia, Settimo Torinese, namely the engineers who worked in the plant until it shut its doors in 2009/2010, after more than fifty years in operation, to hand over to the industrial facility designed by Renzo Piano.)

The machine is probably combines a mixer (two horizontal, forward-rotating cylinders), a calender (three vertical cylinders), and an assembly of components taken from other machines over the years.

One part came from an old Robinson mixer, like the one photographed in the Ponte Seveso plant in 1883. The date “1888” (although it could be “1883”) can be seen on one of the two vertical paddles that push the rubber towards the two horizontal and parallel rollers. The brand name is Farrel Foundry & Machinery, like the machinery photographed in the Mixing Room of the Bicocca plant in 1922.  Another nameplate on the right side of the machine bears the crest of the Kingdom of Italy and the words “Esonero (exempt) 24.12.1910”, possibly a tax certificate.

The left side of the machine is a small calender with three overlapping cylinders: the tubes which used to carry the hot water to heat them up are still clearly visible. A series of gears varied the distance between them while the toothed wheel was moved by the motor below it (inside the cage which is now empty). The nameplate here, bearing a star symbol and letters PCM (Pirelli & C. Milano), says that the machine was registered in the list of assets in 1933.  It was used for many years in Bicocca then moved to Settimo Torinese when the factory opened in 1954, for use as laboratory machinery given its small size. It remained at Settimo for many years. Until yesterday.

The industrial century, the 1900s, advanced alongside it. The memory remains.