Addressing business leaders, Pope Francis recently said, “May the common good serve as a compass in business”, while also calling for “a new humanism of labour” and recognising the crucial role enterprise plays in growth for that “just economy” that is of such importance to him, as he has reiterated in recent speeches. The Pope has also called for “new strategies, styles [and] conduct […] to invest in projects able to reach those who are often forgotten or overlooked”, i.e. the elderly, who are “too often discarded as useless or unproductive”, and young people, “prisoners of precarious employment or of unemployment that has lasted too long”, insisting that it is the individual that must be at the heart of enterprise, while urging business leaders to take the “high road” of justice and to “reject the shortcuts of nepotism and favouritism and the dangerous detours of dishonesty and compromise”. His warning is clear, and drew the applause of business leaders: “It is dignity that is absolute, not the market.”

Seven thousand business leaders and their family had gathered in the grand, solemn Paul VI Audience Hall one grey, rainy day for the “Jubilee of Industry” and to show their sincere respect for what the Pope had to say. Shortly prior to the speech of Pope Francis, the president of Confindustria, Giorgio Squinzi, spoke briefly, recalling that “the only true antidote to speculation is enterprise”—the values of enterprise, its focus on the individual and on the idea that dignity comes from a job well done.

This meeting of the members of Confindustria and the Pope was an important, first-of-its-kind event that shows how, in times of crisis, solutions are not to be found in the shallows of economism, but rather in a new way of viewing the individual, labour, and enterprise—in values.

Indeed, “value” is the operative word in business, “creating value for shareholders” through profitability, growth in stock prices, dividends, and the financial resources needed for further investment and to further increase that ever important “value”.

Of course, that same term also has its plural form, “values”, and, if we take this a step further, beyond the more limited view of the “spirit of capitalism”, it could also be said that, in this day and age, no value can be created if we do not also pay close attention to values, plural—to respecting the individual and the environment, to safety, to safeguarding the rights of both workers and consumers, to harmony between the enterprise and the community in which it operates. Not only is there no contradiction between “value” (even in the specific sense of business profits) and “values”, but it is only from this new perspective that businesses can grow and that the nation can grow in a matter that is more balanced, better, and more “just”.

“Do business to create values”, wrote Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, on the front page of Il Sole24Ore to present the seminar “Fare insieme”, a meeting between Confindustria and the Vatican held Friday, 26 February, at the conference centre at the Augustinian Patristic Institute one day prior to the audience with the Pope. In the same way, the president of Confindustria, Giorgio Squinzi, wrote an article in Avvenire in search of “answers to difficult questions” about values, about the meaning of doing business, and about responsibility for “creatively building opportunities for growth even for those who have less, to innovate, to generate new jobs and social capital”; in short, to build a new social contract “together” (this was the operative word).

This first-of-its-kind meeting between the Catholic Church and the Italian industrial federation provided an important opportunity for open, sincere dialogue between diverse viewpoints in search of convergence, a shared commitment to look to development, not only for the economy, but also, and above all, for society and for humanity as a whole—an attempt to reconcile the importance of “doing” (the “Fare” from the name of the event) in business with the values of “together” (“insieme”), of solidarity, of community, and of inclusion.

The seminar on Friday (which was attended by economists, business leaders, representatives from the Vatican, and experts of ethics and economics) went beyond the typical meeting of the Church and Catholic business leaders to seek to give enterprise greater positivity and meaning.

It was an opportunity for enterprise to approach the universe of values, values that it already embodies in part, but that it must also accept as a challenge to be overcome, a quest for a new and better social legitimacy that sets aside that anti-business culture that remains all too common in Italy. For the Catholic Church, one of the most respected moral authorities today, it was an opportunity to approach the issues of society today, of alarming levels of individualism (selfishness might be more to the point), in an effort to steer society more towards sharing and solidarity. Indeed, enterprise can be—and often has been throughout history—a place of inclusion and of good citizenship, the embodiment of rights and duties, of individual responsibility and social value.

“Business is a vocation, and a noble vocation, provided that those engaged in it see themselves challenged by a greater meaning in life,” wrote Pope Francis in his Evangelii Gaudium as he outlined the features of a “just economy” that is able to go beyond “the fetishism of money”. Reacting to these words of the Pope, the philosopher Michael Novak delivered an address entitled “The Vocation of Business Is the Main Hope for the World’s Poor”. In the words of Cardinal Ravasi, “Industry has met with the Holy Father [in search of a] common ethos” on issues such as “justice, freedom, individual dignity, solidarity, knowledge and education, responsibility, individual and social rights, labour, authentic faith, and morality”. But he further clarifies these important words by noting that it is to be done in a manner that is free from “vaguely moral stereotypes” and that seeks new and fuller meaning by living life towards the common good.

A healthy culture of enterprise arises and thrives, in part, by looking at the good that has been done in the past. It is a matter of education and of environment, but also of careful, thought-out imitation. Example is good, but not every example can become a lesson in good management. 

It is these stories of business leaders who have followed their own path—often, but not always, successfully—that provide the basis for Dai che ce la facciamo! Storie di quelli con la fila di fuori, a recently published book (of just over 110 pages) by Gianluca Spadoni which is essentially a collection of 16 stories of businesses and their leaders, told in vivid detail.  

Spadoni teaches for the Executive Master of Sales & Marketing at the Alma Mater Business School of the University of Bologna and has years of experience in business and business growth. He writes from his own experience, and he does it well. As such, his book takes a simple, behind-the-scenes look at the stories of actual Italian business leaders who are not well known by the general public, using these events to teach something to the reader. 

Each chapter is introduced by a one-word title that expresses the prominent trait of that story’s main character. At the end of each story, there is summary of the “teachings” from that story in no more than four to five lines. Following this format, the book tells stories of perseverance, vision, faith, passion, joy, individuality, courage, sacrifice, and the ability to start over, to put things in their proper order, and to find the good in everything. Throughout the pages of the book, we witness the lives of entrepreneurs in tourism and food services, of farmers and industrialists, of textile magnates and designers, of estate agents and door-to-door salesmen, and of the brand of genius that created businesses in communications, in marketing, and in cosmetics.

Dai che ce la facciamo! is a book that can be taken in just a few hours of thrilling reading and with one great feature in particular: it is an optimistic book despite dealing with Italian business. Of course, it must also be said that Spadoni doesn’t hide the challenges, the mistakes, or the failures of the individual, but his work breathes a spirit of adventure, a great dose of common sense, and unbridled enthusiasm while lacking any sort of stereotype or cliché. In the end, Spadoni writes, “Thus we find that there is no one rule that applies to everyone, that there is no guidebook that applies to every situation, but that there are attitudes and behaviours that remain firmly intact even as circumstances change and which ensure the success of the enterprise.”

Dai che ce la facciamo! Storie di quelli con la fila di fuori

Gianluca Spadoni

Franco Angeli, 2016 

Developing a talent for entrepreneurship is no easy task. It does, of course, take a certain spark that triggers an entrepreneurial drive, but then something needs to be done to continue fuelling that flame. This comes from that entrepreneurship education that is often seen as something of a mirage, but which can then become concrete in focused, ongoing action.

Understanding the conditions needed to develop entrepreneurship is, therefore, of great importance, and a read of “Entrepreneurship Education: the Role of Local Business”, by Ida Lindh and Sara Thorgren (Luleå University of Technology; Luleå, Sweden) can help. Published in the January issue of Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, the article opens with the observation that entrepreneurship education is high on political agendas due to the contribution it can make to cultural change and to the growth of a nation’s economy.

The authors then note that the literature on the subject suggests that “the local context may influence the results of entrepreneurship education”, but it is not only a mater of creating technology districts or providing scholarships for management degrees. The path that leads to an informed, widespread entrepreneurship is one that begins with a recommendation for educators to “strengthen their relationships with local businesses”. In other words, entrepreneurs learn from the example set by other entrepreneurs.

The study also explores two particular aspects of the link between the community and the growth of entrepreneurship. First of all, there is the role of local business in education policy, followed by the way in which “local entrepreneurial activity and culture may influence how policies are understood and translated into practice at the local level”.

The results of the study indicate that collaboration between education and business can strengthen, rather than change, the activation of existing paths local development. A business does not arise out of nothing, but rather is the fruit of a whole set of conditions that mutually arise and which education—together with the very structure of society—can support. This is an important point that explains a great deal about the efficacy of a great many education reforms and as many programmes aimed at achieving growth in enterprise.

Entrepreneurship Education: the Role of Local Business

Ida Lindh, Sara Thorgren

Entrepreneurship & Regional Development: An International Journal, January 2016

“Creativity is true capital,” said Enrico Moretti, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, in an article for the Corriere della Sera supplement La Lettura. Writing about the future of work, he tells of a world in which traditional manufacturers are disappearing (e.g. Kodak, an extraordinary example of high tech until a couple of decades ago and now in apparent free fall) as new ones are arising that feature an original blend of product and service, of research and the constant transformation of innovative cultures. “Knowledge and talent are what generate wealth,” Moretti continues. Just a few years ago, his book The New Geography of Jobs (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) described how radically the economy of the western world is changing, supporting his account with facts and numbers and documenting how one high-tech job effectively gives rise to five other positions, including in more traditional industries. He continues today to reiterate the fact that global competition centres around the ability to attract both human capital and innovative business. The number and strength of a nation’s hubs of innovation will determine whether that nation prospers or declines. Areas in which physical products are being made will continue to lose importance, while cities populated by creative, interconnected workers will become the factories of the future.

These challenging, original views of Moretti’s take full account of the context that is transforming a US economy in which a variety of factors are beginning to converge, including reshoring, the return of the automotive industry and, at the same time, the booming digital economy, led by Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft and featuring innovative services, creative start-ups, and digital manufacturing, proof that, as Moretti says, “knowledge and talent are what generate wealth”.

Even the largest corporation with deep roots in manufacturing are aware of it. Take General Electric, as just one intriguing example, a company which recently moved their headquarters from Fairfield, Connecticut, to the Boston area, a hotbed of knowledge, creativity, and innovative businesses, a place where publishing houses, think tanks, and laboratories for the arts grow right along side institutes of education, innovation and excellence such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

But if creativity is true capital, what drives it and makes it thrive? Eric Weiner, a talented journalist, writes, in his book The Geography of Genius (Simon & Schuster), of “the Four D’s”: diversity of ideas; discernment; disorder, because out of chaos always comes positive flows of information; and deprivation, the creative drive born out of necessity. Weiner found these ingredients in ancient Athens, in Florence during the Renaissance (a model of innovation better than what is now the Silicon Valley), in Shakespeare’s London, and in Vienna in the time of Mozart and Beethoven, and he emphasises the connection between needs and the environment, between intelligence and the height of the obstacles to be overcome. He also talks about the concept of the comfortable chair, saying—in an interview with Viviana Devoto for Corriere della Sera (31 January)—that the softer and more comfortable the chair, the worse it is. Without limits, we are lost, because it is tension that leads to invention—which is analogous to the “stay hungry, stay foolish” of Steve Jobs’ famous Stanford speech.

So much can be learned from the US example, but what about Italy, and the rest of Europe, where manufacturing is still of great importance? Here, it is still the best in manufacturing that is the cornerstone of renewal. A brilliant Italian sociologist and keen observer of innovation, Aldo Bonomi talks about the hybridisation of production and research, about creativity and design applied to engineering, and about medium- and high-tech industry competing internationally, yet constantly seeking to improve. In Italy, the hub of it all is Milan, a metropolitan area encompassing Brianza and Lodi in which manufacturing accounts for 29% of GDP (as compared to a national average of 18%) and where there is a high concentration of manufacturing, universities, service firms, culture and research. And for the future, the trend is towards a “creative Milan”, guided by Assolombarda’s version of the acronym “STEAM”, which they have changed to “Science, Technology, Education, Arts and Manufacturing” (in place of “Mathematics”), and by the area’s “polytechnic culture”. Indeed, Italians and Italian industrialists have long been masters of creativity and of keeping a keen eye on the future.

Sound industrial policies are one of the prerequisites of business growth. This may sound obvious, but it is actually one of the sticking points, both in Italy and beyond, that has yet to be fully resolved. Indeed, an enterprise can have the best business leaders and most talented managers around and have the best organisation for their business, but find themselves held back by irrational policies that run counter to what is actually needed and which are centred around needs of self-promotion, rather than on development of the potential of the business to which those policies apply. 

So what can be done? A series of important solutions, which enrich the culture of enterprise both of business leaders and policymakers and other public decision-makers, can be found in a recent work by Franco Mosconi (professor of Industrial Economics at the University of Parma and, more importantly, a keen observer of the mechanisms of manufacturing growth and decline and how they relate to policymaking both in Italy and throughout Europe) entitled The New European Industrial Policy: Global Competitiveness and the Manufacturing Renaissance. The book is a sort of condensed guide to sound industrial policy aimed at boosting the driving force of a nation’s economy, i.e. manufacturing. 

The underlying concept of the book is that industrial policy should be at least European in scope, not merely national, with all emphasis placed on a series of actions that Mosconi compellingly depicts in the form of a triangle. On the first side of the triangle, we have Competition Policy; on the second, Commercial Policy (and so all that concerns trade, customs and duties). The third side of the triangle, then, is Technology Policy, which is seen as the true key to putting manufacturing back on the path to growth, but all of which must be guided by a truly shared form of governance. 

In order to demonstrate all of this, Mosconi breaks his reasoning down into five chapters. He opens with an analysis of Europe’s current industrial policy, followed by a look at the role played by enterprise, both the big players and small and medium enterprises. He then discusses the various models of capitalism that are possible before analysing the implementation of the EU’s technology policy. His book concludes with a discussion of the relationship between State and market. 

Mosconi’s The New European Industrial Policy is weighty tome that is to be read with care, as it contains a remarkable collection of research in the field, but it is certainly a good read for anyone looking not only to manage a business, but also to place an enterprise within a context of knowledge that properly reflects today’s complex and ever-changing marketplace.  

The New European Industrial Policy: Global Competitiveness and the Manufacturing Renaissance

Franco Mosconi

Routledge, 2015 

A well-rounded enterprise looks both within the organisation and without. It explores the world for new markets and new business opportunities, and it is this sort of approach that helps to build a focused, competitive culture of enterprise.

The twentieth edition of the economic report published by Centro Einaudi, a research institute based in Turin (and with the support of UBI Banca), and edited by Mario Deaglio, entitled La ripresa, e se toccasse a noi? (Recovery. What if it were up to us?), can help business leaders at all levels to see clearly beyond the factory walls. Featuring contributions be economists and researchers such as Giorgio Arfaras, Anna Caffarena, Gabriele Guggiola, Paolo Migliavacca, Anna Paola Quaglia, Giuseppe Russo, and Giorgio Vernoni, the report explores both change in recent decades and the possibilities for the future, but without coming to any catastrophic conclusions despite finding a world suspended between hope and an openness to new technology and great challenge brought on by the decline of the old economic and political order internationally. The team of contributors to this study write of an economic crisis that is now largely behind us, but which has left us with a problematic outlook for the future and the potential for new sources of energy and “new economic miracles”. In short, this is not a time of hopes and dreams, but of complex challenges to be overcome.

The report is clearly divided into chapters, each of which covers a specific, distinct topic. It opens with “the long wave of change” and an overview of the issues faced by a multi-centred world, of the innovations of the Internet, of changes in the job market, and the globalisation of capitalism, before turning to Italy’s place in such a world as the nation seesaws between growth and decline. This is followed by chapters on the evolution of the crisis, on international economic order, and another look at the situation in Italy.

Some of the conclusions reached in the report may come as a surprise. What emerges is a picture of a lacklustre Europe and an Africa that appears to be shaking off an economic inertia that has lasted for millennia. Italy, conversely, appears to have begun heading down the necessarily long road to recovery, with an outlook that is less bleak and is founded on new markets and new industries. Now, we must look to the developments of the coming months—no catastrophe and no triumphalism, just “quiet and measured optimism” as the report concludes.

This report of Centro Einaudi in Turin provides a good overview of what is happening today in enterprise and will be a useful source of information for some time.

La ripresa, e se toccasse a noi? Ventesimo rapporto sull’economia globale e l’Italia

Mario Deaglio (editor)

Guerini e associati, 2015

Human capital may be fleeing Italy, but sometimes it comes back. Like Diego Piacentini, senior vice-president at Amazon, who put a highly paid seat in the top ranks of a US multinational on hold to come head up the Digital Office for Italy’s Prime Minister—from senior executive to civil servant, from Seattle high-tech to Rome, where digital innovation has yet to become a widespread part of the culture of government or of enterprise. How will Piacentini fare? We hope well. Italy very much needs the digital economy to flourish in order to radically renovate government and put enterprise in a position to stand up to global competition as we move towards “Industry 4.0”.

And he’ll be doing it all for free. Although not essential, this is an important aspect. It is important because it shows that there are people out there with the high-level skills and experience who are willing to work hard for the “common good” and to lend a hand when Italy is in need.

Around the same time as this Piacentini announcement, another Italian, Alessandra Buonanno, was also in the news. Another fine example of Italian excellence, Buonanno played a key role in the discovery of gravitational waves—the “chirp […] that revolutionises physics”, as it was called in a headline in La Repubblica (12 February)—and in confirming Einstein’s theory. After her degree in Physics at the University of Pisa and a series of prestigious positions in Paris, at the California Institute of Technology, and at the University of Maryland, Alessandra Buonanno now directs the Max Planck Institute in Potsdam, Germany.

Is there a brain drain out of Italy? Probably. Such as when the French Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques offered Buonanno an opportunity to conduct research in France immediately after university. Or what about Carlo Ratti, an excellent Italian technologist and architect who teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston and who, in Corriere della Sera, recently provided a clear, scientifically sound explanation of gravitational waves? But a dozen years ago, he also opened an international design studio in Turin that focuses on the evolution of high-tech for urban applications. Is this another example of human capital returning?

Seen together, the stories of these three people would suggest that it’s a bit more complicated than just “fleeing and returning”. Nowadays, the ease and speed with which we can travel and the development of new communication technologies has made a whole series of cross-cultural connections possible.

It is true that the thousands of young people, often the smartest and most determined, who leave Italy in search of better career opportunities and a better life can be seen as a detriment to the Italian economy, and all those who have been complaining in the news and on social media in recent days about the lack of attention being paid to this systemic problem in Italy (such as Roberta D’Alessandro, an Italian linguist in the Netherlands, who wrote a recent, viral Facebook post addressing Italy’s Education Minister, Stefania Giannini, criticising her use of statistics in an attempt to show how well Italy is doing in the development of human capital) are right to speak up. Although a certain sense of defeat and flight of the best minds abroad is certainly justified, the story doesn’t end there.

Business success is built, in part, by looking carefully at what other businesses are doing and also at what has happened in the past. The work of any good business leader is made up of a peculiar mix of calculation and risk-taking, of practicality and the ability to dream and inspire others to dream. The same can be said of the culture of enterprise, which arises directly out of the efforts of business leaders and of those they lead.  

There are enough books of business stories now to fill several libraries, and many of these books are well worth reading. John Brooks’ Business Adventures. Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street, originally published in 1969, reprinted in 2014, and now available in Italian under the title Business Adventures. Otto storie classiche dal mondo dell’economia, is one such book and is much more useful than others in building that sort of culture of enterprise that can best serve everyone in business today. 

Brooks, a highly respected journalist, created this book from a series of articles he wrote in the 1960s for The New Yorker, telling the tales—not all of which had happy endings—of some of the great leaders of industry of that time and of the businesses they led.

It opens with the adventures of Xerox and the photocopier that revolutionised the office, juxtaposed immediately against a story of failure with the Ford Edsel. The third story is that of the “Little Crash” of Wall Street in 1962, which Brooks is able to explain with great clarity and detail, given that he was there to experience it first hand. Next comes the adventures of the US federal income tax and the attitude towards this tax by business leaders of the period, which then brings us directly back to stories of other corporations, including: Texas Gulf Sulphur, for talk about insider trading; General Electric, and discussion of the harm caused by a lack of communication; and Piggly Wiggly Stores and the tale of what happens when you play games on Wall Street. The book closes with the tale of central banks of the 1960s and the interplay of the dollar and the pound.

Brooks has written a book that is as enjoyable as it is instructive. It reads like an adventure novel (without all the “miracle cures” for becoming good managers), but remains educational to this day because, as Bill Gates wrote on his blog in an article about this book (and as Federico Rampini recalls in his foreword to the Italian edition), “It’s certainly true that many of the particulars of business have changed. But the fundamentals have not.” 

Business Adventures. Otto storie classiche dal mondo dell’economia

John Brooks

Einaudi, 2016 

Unity is strength in business, including when enterprises are in need of new funding in order to grow. That’s the spirit of crowdfunding, which is becoming increasingly popular as a way of raising funding in the marketplace, particularly among small and medium enterprise. Behind it all lies a philosophy of achieving cost-savings by taking advantage of the crowd, even in funding. Now, even undertakings of larger scope are beginning to make use of crowdfunding, further blurring the boundaries between small-scale and large-scale business, the consequences of which have yet to be fully explored.

A recent university thesis, “Il crowdfunding nei modelli di finanziamento di progetti imprenditoriali” (Crowdfunding in the financial models of corporate projects), presented by Lucia Michela Daniele to the Department of Economics at Seconda Università degli Studi di Napoli, discusses both the theory and the practice of this issue in a clear and thorough manner. Her paper opens with a section on the theory behind crowdfunding before turning to an analysis of the its efficacy and a discussion of the characteristics of corporate undertakings that could benefit from this form of financing.

After a number of pages of definitions, the author takes a look at the opportunities of crowdfunding and related criticisms and describes the technical aspects to be aware of. She then provides a more in-depth analysis of laws, regulations and other aspects related specifically to business development before closing with an overview of the situation in Italy.

In her conclusion, Lucia Michela Daniele explains that, even in Italy, crowdfunding is gaining in popularity for corporate projects, adding that it is not just a passing fad. She notes that the rapid growth in funding volumes worldwide, legislative tensions around the world, and the constant evolution of and experimentation with models to promote innovation confirm that crowdfunding is gradually being seen as a valid alternative in efforts to raise funds, but she clarifies that there are still numerous critical issues that could be said to have been overcome. In other words, the road to modernising the culture of enterprise through crowdfunding remains open, and works like this one by Lucia Michela Daniele can help us to find our way.

Il crowdfunding nei modelli di finanziamento di progetti imprenditoriali

Lucia Michela Daniele

Thesis, Investment Analysis – Department of Economics, Seconda Università degli Studi di Napoli, 2015

Dubbed “Galileo”, a name that evokes the best in Italian science, this General Electric project calls for USD 600 million in investment in the Italian regions of Tuscany (the core of the project), Lombardy, Piedmont, and Puglia. The US multinational, one of the largest corporations in the world, hopes to make Florence’s Nuovo Pignone GE’s hub for international research into next-generation turbines and compressors. This is a massive investment for an ambitious project, which will entail the hiring of 500 engineers in the near future.

The project is a big win for Italy, for the country’s culture of scientific, and for the ability of our best universities to provide excellence in education—all factors that helped guide GE’s decision to pick Italy over countries such as South Korea, the Czech Republic and Mexico. Also contributing to the selection were the quality of Italy’s human resources, the special cultural and humanistic traits of our young engineers and researchers, and that “polytechnic culture” based on a unique blend of scientific talent and humanistic knowledge that only Italy can express to such a high degree and which drives the country’s extraordinary, highly competitive culture of enterprise.

GE’s Galileo project (defined at the end of January with the help of the Italian government and the Region of Tuscany) confirms Italy’s growing attractiveness for international investment in areas in which the quality of “human capital”—of individual talent—is key. Recent investments by Cisco, Bayer and Apple for a research centre in Naples are further evidence of this allure and prove the validity of a strategy that we must continue pursuing, that of quality education, strong relations between academia and the business world (including increasing involvement of the vocational schools and career training), research, innovation, and the transfer of technology.

GE in particular has a special relationship with Italy. In 1994, they acquired Nuovo Pignone (Florence) from Eni, radically reorganised it, and made it an international benchmark as GE Oil & Gas, which paved the way for the this ambitious Galileo project. In recent years, GE also acquired Avio from Cameri, in the province of Novara, and made it an aeronautics firm of extraordinarily high quality—a leader in “Industry 4.0” and sophisticated applications of 3D printing—and the organisation continues to believe that Italy is the ideal location, both with its own facilities and the strength of the nation’s high-quality supply chain, for cutting-edge manufacturing of international scope. It is a strategic decision that can act as an innovative paradigm both for other multinationals and for the best in Italian manufacturing.