A company is also a matter of psychology. But this does not just mean the ability – which the entrepreneur must in any case have – to make employees feel involved, to have the empathy that makes it easier to take on tough tasks, to look beyond the numbers in the financial statements and understand the deeper meanings of production. All of this is essential, but it is accompanied by the need to pay attention to social aspects of company activities that are not always that evident. This is also true when a company makes Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) one of the key instruments in finding its place in the world in which it operates. 

Gianvito D’Aprile (PhD in Social and Community Psychology at the University of Salento) has studied CSR not from an organisational-management point of view but rather from a psychological and social standpoint. He starts from the premise that the Corporate Social Responsibility process has indeed been widely investigated in socio-economic and organisation literature – because it is considered to offer companies a competitive edge in the medium to long term, and especially in the current situation of financial crisis – but that it has been little considered in terms of psychology. It would appear that existing studies have mainly focused on identifying instruments for measuring CSR, on the technicalities involved and on exploring the relationship between CSR, culture, organisation clients and social capital. The psychosocial aspects and the ways in which business practices can be made to be socially responsible as well as effective have so far remained more in the shadows. 

The author thus assesses CSR using instruments such as the Social Identity Theory and the Sense of Community to explain how the same CSR can be given greater impact by better collective participation in the organisation and in corporate initiatives.

D’Aprile’s analysis comes however with a message: CSR is possible and more effective if it goes beyond a mechanistic form of management and looks at people and their life experiences. People who work in a company cannot be considered as just numbers – the author seems to be saying – even, or rather especially, if the company wants to make Corporate Social Responsibility one of its strong points. Quite the contrary, for it is by involving people that CSR acquires greater motivation and thus more impact and effectiveness. This may appear to be trivial, but there is often a danger that it will be forgotten. 

D’Aprile’s book is short – less than two hundred pages – but it nevertheless conveys a sense of the complexity of the issues involved, as well as his great fascination for the corporate culture it comes from and which it can help to transform.

Responsabilità Sociale d’Impresa. La prospettiva psicosociale

Gianvito D’Aprile 

Edizione Accademiche Italiane, 2014

When a company goes off to conquer new markets, it needs to change its own culture. And this means it must change the way its work is organised, the way it takes decisions, and the eyes with which it looks at itself and at the world. This is no easy matter, especially when it is people and processes that need to change. It is therefore important to understand how to do it and when to do it. What is ultimately at stake is the fate of the company itself and of those who work in it. “Quality Management and Supply Chain Management Integration: A Conceptual Model” by Ana Cristina Fernandes, Paulo Sampaio and Maria do Sameiro Carvalho (of the Systems and Production Department, University of Minho, Portugal), which was published a few weeks ago in the Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management (Bali, Indonesia), responds to these issues.

“Recent trends in the business world”, explain the three researchers “have forced companies to expand their activities into new regions where they can find qualified manpower, lower production costs, high availability of raw materials.” However, all this gives “rise to wider and more complex supply chains but also [brings] in new opportunities to leverage their competitive advantages.”

New organisational models are needed, both inside and outside the company. This means changing the mentality, the approach to production, and the vision of the market. The goal to to be reached, explain the authors, is that of providing “a service of excellence to satisfy customers” and then to “produce value and optimize profitability,” but in what now needs to be a new environment.

To reach this objective, it is possible to start by using two instruments: “total quality management” and “supply chain management”. What is required is greater quality of management, right across the board, as well as coordination of the production flow from the arrival of raw materials through to the final product. And yet, even with all this, the company may still not make it.

What is needed, say Cristina Fernandes and her team, is integration between these two methods. And to explain the matter better, the Portuguese researchers use a large diagram that shows the combination of management methods and production organisation in a single process that brings together external influences and pressures, and internal opportunities and resistance. What emerges is a model in six dimensions, which take into account management and strategy and planning, and then the involvement and commitment of stakeholders and employees, levels of information and integration, relationships with suppliers, management leadership, and continuous improvement and innovation.

The model that the new corporate culture the company needs will take shape at the heart of this model. This culture will be open to exploring new markets and to experimenting with new production and management solutions.

In just a few pages, the study published by Fernandes, Sampaio and Sameiro Carvalho manages to provide a clear idea of where we need to look if we want to have a better understanding of what a company does when it conquers new markets. And what culture comes out of it all.

Quality Management and Supply Chain Management Integration: A Conceptual Model

Ana Cristina Fernandes, Paulo Sampaio, Maria do Sameiro Carvalho

Systems and Production Department, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal

In Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management, Bali, Indonesia, 7-9 January 2014

The cover story for the latest issue of the McKinsey Quarterly, the international journal published by the advisory firm McKinsey & Company, is entitled “Shaping the future of manufacturing”. On the pages within, we find a documented study of the strategies and efforts to do just that, thereby restructuring and relaunching the manufacturing economy by taking advantage of the sophisticated, revolutionary technologies of 3D printing and seeking new ways to unite manufacturing and services, ICT and logistics, energy provision and finance. With the era of finance dominating over manufacturing coming to an end, we are now seeing a return to the real economy, and so to manufacturing. The McKinsey Global Institute was already talking about “manufacturing the future” back in November 2013, and, also last year, Gary P. Pisano and Willy C. Shih, both professors at Harvard Business School, wrote about the “manufacturing renaissance” in their book Producing Prosperity, which talks about strategies for developing wealth and economic power in America.

This is the new direction for the economy, a quest for lasting social, environmental and economic sustainability, whether it be in Obama’s America (which has long been insisting on the key importance of its auto industry) and in Cameron’s Great Britain, in Holland’s France and, of course, in Merkel’s Germany—Europe’s leading manufacturer—or even (and why not?) in Italy, which is still in second place in manufacturing in the EU and can take pride in the dynamism of some excellent businesses, but which, thus far, lacks a true manufacturing strategy centred around innovation, research, and efforts to increase productivity and international competitiveness. As the reader will be aware, the EU has set a challenging goal of making manufacturing account for 20% of European GDP by 2020 (up from the current average of 16%), so there is still much to be done, and quickly.

But exactly what and how? The McKinsey Quarterly talks about “next-shoring” and emphasises the importance of greater “proximity to demand” (in both developed nations and emerging markets) while also focusing on “innovative supply ecosystems”, as this proximity can help to make a decisive leap forward in competitiveness.

Next-shoring, therefore, is a new strategy in manufacturing, something of a hybrid of offshoring, whereby manufacturing is decentralised to areas where labour costs were lower, and the more recent phenomenon of “reshoring”, which saw manufacturing return to its more traditional origins, such as in the US, in an effort to increase product quality and compete in the premium segments of the market that feature greater value added.

Next-shoring is not about the US or the EU trying to compete with the Far East or Latin America based on labour costs (a competition which has been lost even as the cost of labour is on the rise in these areas, such as in Brazil and in the more industrially advanced areas of China), but rather about focusing on quality, where labour costs have little impact (although they are still to be lowered, such as by drastically cutting the tax wedge in Italy), and on other factors, such as design, efficiency, safety, performance, cutting-edge technology, symbolic value, and so on.

In practical terms, one example of next-shoring would be producing cars or tyres in Brazil (or increasing production there) because demand in this growing economy is shifting towards greater value added and higher levels of performance and because there is already an efficient, high-quality supply chain there, as well as because the skill and capabilities of the human resources in the country continue to improve. In short, “proximity to demand and proximity to innovation”, in the words of the McKinsey Quarterly, and innovation in its broadest sense, encompassing digital technologies such as 3D printing, but also the biotechnologies and the nanotechnologies that are key in creating the new materials and all of the components of the knowledge economy, which are crucial in improving the quality and efficiency of manufacturing, while also making it more aesthetically pleasing and technically functional (hence design, an area in which China and Brazil are investing heavily along with the best Italian and European schools, including Italy’s polytechnic institutes in Milan and Turin) through new ways of uniting research, development, manufacturing and distribution.

The road to the future, from Europe out to the rest of the world, is an exciting one, and next-shoring is the next challenge to be overcome.

The art of rhetoric is still needed in business, perhaps even more so than it once was. In this age of efficiency, aggressive use of technology, reason, and the efficacy of action, being skilled in the arts of communication and reason is just as important as managing the books. This is the idea that led Andrea Granelli (with a background in both computer science and psychiatry and, above all, vast experience in communication, marketing and innovation within major corporations) and Flavia Trupia (with a degree in the philosophy of language, she is a communication consultant, ghostwriter, and instructor at the LUISS Business School) to write Retorica e business, a 150-page work that is dense with information but still easy to read.

According to the authors, rhetoric remains a highly effective tool, even in the hard-fought world of business. Granelli and Trupia demonstrate their reasoning in two ways: first with theory and then with practice, the latter of which involves a series of stories of business people as well as a number of practical suggestions.

The stories contained in Retorica e business concern such important examples as Enrico Mattei (and the carrozzone – an Italian slang word used to refer to an inefficient public body – and how it changed the geopolitical landscape), Adriano Olivetti (and the Silicon Valley before there was a Silicon Valley), and Steve Jobs (and the power of a shaman), as well as Oscar Farinetti (when optimism is commonplace), Pope Francis (and habemus comunicatorem) and Angela Ahrendts (and spontaneity over good manners). Each of these offers a point for reflection for anyone wanting to learn more about how rhetoric can be used in business. 

Granelli and Trupia then look at a number of aspects of modern management and the culture of enterprise. According to the authors, business case studies are a form of storytelling; conventions, a means of motivating to take action; the point of sale, a vehicle of communication, whereas the careful maintenance of words breathes new life into the worn-out signifiers of business jargon. 

All of this brings us to a final, essential clarification: with the boom of multimedia and digital communication, knowledge of the topic, sound reasoning, clarity of speech, and command of the language may no longer be enough. In order to deal with the abundance of signals and the deafening background noise, we need to supplement logic and psychology with a third element: creativity, based on the ability to give shape to intuition.

Retorica e business is a book to be read from cover to cover. 

Retorica e business. Intuire ragionare sedurre nell’era digitale

(Rhetoric and business. Intuiting, reasoning, seducing in the digital age)

Andrea Granelli, Flavia Trupia

EGEA, 2014 

Doing business well is, in part, a question of balance. This is not just a simple theory taken from a modern business management textbook, but something that can also be seen in practice.  And we aren’t talking only about balance in the accounts, although this is important, too. It’s about the need to find the right (internal and external) balance in conduct and in relations in many areas of operations, and even in the entrepreneurial approach that underlies the creation of the business itself. Therefore, it’s important to dig down into the core of a company’s structure to better understand where it has balance and what its weak points are in order to then improve performance.

Some help in this regard has been offered by Tetsuro Okazaki, a professor of economics at Chiba University of Commerce in Ichikawa, Japan, and an expert in game theory and public economics, in his study of the relationship between the coordination of functions in a business and the “multiplicity of equilibria” therein. In “Coordination Problem and Coordination among Groups: Effect of Group Size on Business Culture”, the title of the paper to be published in the Journal of Advanced Management Science, Okazaki seeks to better understand how the various groups of people within a corporation interact, beginning with social conditioning, the company’s culture and its production constraints. All of this then has an impact on the creation and development of business culture and how the company acts towards the markets and the rest of the outside world, as well as on the actual organisation of its production. In order to do this, Okazaki studies how Toyota organises its production (in particular the just-in-time, kanban approach) based on cards that are used to pass information about the production cycle from one group to another.

“In coordination games, we have multiplicity of equilibria,” Okazaki explains. “This multiplicity makes it possible to explain the coexistence of contradictory cultures in a society.” He continues, “If the group size is large, the multiplicity of equilibria disappears.” What we then get is an even more complex set of equilibrium and imbalance, of punctualities and “unpunctualities”, which, together, result in a different enterprise. Toyota’s kanban approach is one such example, and from diverse groups and a variety of equilibria we get an efficient assembly line.

Apart from a few (necessary) technical sections, Okazaki’s work sheds light on an important aspect of modern organisation and of the culture of enterprise.

Coordination Problem and Coordination among Groups: Effect of Group Size on Business Culture 

Tetsuro Okazaki (Chiba University of Commerce/Ichikawa, Japan)

Journal of Advanced Management Science Vol. 2, No. 3, September 2014

Italians are “moderate innovators”, well below the EU average and still far too far behind the “champions of innovation”, which remain the US and Japan, as well as Korea and—within Europe—Switzerland, Denmark, Germany and Finland. The negative impact is, of course, being felt in terms of competitiveness and economic growth and is weighing on the economic imbalance that the EU has recently defined as “excessive”, while urging the Italian government and the social partners to bring about the sort of reform needed in order to jumpstart the economy.

A recent EU report (as reported in leading newspapers on 5 and 6 March) has also reiterated Italy’s limits in innovation. Based on 25 parameters, this report ranked countries as “innovation leaders” (such as Switzerland and Germany, in particular), “innovation followers” (from Luxembourg to Cyprus and including Sweden, the UK, Austria and France), “moderate innovators” (Italy, followed by Spain, Portugal, Greece, Hungary, Poland and Croatia), and “modest innovators” (Romania, Latvia and Bulgaria). These rankings also looked at the various regions within the country, and only three—Emilia, Piedmont and Friuli—rose above the Italian average to be classified as “innovation followers”.

Why such a mediocre ranking for Italy? The usual reasons: limited public and private-sector investment (held back by excessive taxation on businesses); general context not well suited to innovation (because of all the red tape); little openness to international education (as seen in the low number of post-graduate degrees by students outside the EU); below-average patent filings; limited partnerships among innovating businesses; low levels of venture capital, and so on. In short, much needs to be done in order to be up to the challenge and able to compete with the other, more dynamic EU countries.

Europe, of course, has promised to do much more in the form of investment and incentives and has underscored the importance of the €80 million in the budget for the Horizon 2020 programme. In Italy, which has been slow to make use of those funds, it will be up to the regions and to business to prepare programmes to be included within this co-financing framework.

The European figures are to be taken very seriously, and the government and businesses are to be stimulated to invest more in research and development, much more than the 1% of GDP that we are, unfortunately, still stuck at. More investment also must be made in quality education, and we must bring an end to the disastrous policy of budget cuts for education and of mediocrity in the content being taught.

Great care must also be taken in interpreting the numbers, and we must recall that, while it is true that Italy lags in innovation, we also fail to proper account for all of the innovation that businesses do, in fact, do, particularly in terms of adaptation and process innovation. In fact, there is an apparent contradiction between the low level of investment in R&D and the growth of Italian exports. If we really are failing to innovate, how can we explain being competitive in the international marketplace, particularly when we haven’t competed on price in some time? The truth is that businesses are innovating, but they are failing to document it. They are making high-quality products without patenting the discoveries that enabled them, recognising investment in innovation as simply “consulting”. Especially within smaller businesses, the accounts do not properly show how widespread innovation is. In short, we do need to invest more, but we also need to properly account for the investments that are already being made.

At the same time, we must also recall that we need to develop a true culture of innovation throughout the Italian economy. Although there are some highs and lows, the manufacturing firms have it, but the service sector, not so much. And central and local government sees innovation as an attack on the Italian tradition of slow, asphyxiating,  conservative (not to mention corrupt in many areas) bureaucracy.

So what do we mean by innovation? Technology, yes, beginning with ICT and the essential, urgent dissemination of broadband connectivity. Automation, too. Robotics. Digital manufacturing (and the extraordinary phenomenon of 3D printing). Bioscience and biotech. But also a more favourable climate for start-ups and venture capital in order to support the growth of the most innovative businesses, along with an intelligent use of tax incentives and close collaboration between universities, private and public research facilities, and business.

That culture of innovation. A way of looking at the world. A methodology. An approach to reality. Experimentation and transformation. It does involve technology, but also materials and labour relations, standards of governance and relations with stakeholders, strategies of marketing and communication and of design. In these areas, Italy, a hotbed of culture historically, has a great deal to contribute, so long as we learn to think like an evolving system with a bright, exciting past, but one which must also want to build a more dynamic future.

Culture of enterprise is more than just a means (although a sophisticated one) of making things run more smoothly in a business. Yes, the ultimate goal may be to improve productivity and, as a result, profits, but there is—and indeed must be—something more. 

This is essentially the idea that has taken shape in an interesting book, “Lean Philosophy”, written by Vittorio Mascherpa, a business consultant who has been working for decades to bring Zen philosophy to business management. In just over 250 pages, he has sought to explore one of the leading paradigms of modern culture of enterprise: the Toyota Way.

In his book, he describes the origins and subsequent development of the “lean philosophy” of management, as invented by Taiichi Ohno and first used by Toyota, but he begins from an interesting point of view. Lean philosophy is to be seen as a true philosophy of business, not just as a method for producing more, producing better, and with less waste and fewer costs. 

In Europe, according to Mascherpa, things have always been done differently—and incorrectly—thereby making many attempts to apply the Toyota Way in Italian business fail. The purpose of his book, therefore, is to correct these mistakes and show the lean philosophy for what it actually is: a philosophy of work and of life, more than a method of production. And this is no easy task, especially when considering the differences in the way Europeans and the Japanese see life, work and manufacturing. 

The difference between lean philosophy and the western approach to production can be expressed with a metaphor. In a river with a rocky river bed, the hulls of boats can be damaged. In order to make the river more navigable, we can either raise the water level or take out all the rocks. In the traditional approach to production, we choose to raise the level of the water, but under the lean philosophy of production, we choose to remove the rocks. The challenge, then, becomes that of lowering the water level until even the smallest of rocks have been removed.

Mascherpa goes on to explain the “minimalist workshop”, which comes from applying Zen philosophy to production to achieve a minimalist use of all resources in production (e.g. inventories, space, movement, time, workers, etc.), as opposed to the workshop we see under the Ford approach. 

But that’s not all, because the philosophy and methodology behind all of this are told through an ongoing, rigorous analysis of the words of actual proponents of the Toyota Way. The result is a snapshot of what the author calls a new culture of enterprise, finally free from the anachronistic legacy of the assembly line and mass production, one that is to be driven by a new, more humanistic view of work and of the enterprise, much like other, more “western” approaches, important examples of which can be seen even in Italy, such as within Olivetti. 

Lean philosophy. Dallo zen al metodo Toyota per una nuova cultura d’impresa (From Zen to the Toyota Way for a new culture of enterprise)

Vittorio Mascherpa

Guerini Assocciati, February 2014

In times of crisis, even the culture of enterprise changes. The fundamentals may not change, but certainly the entrepreneurial approach to the marketplace and the structure of the enterprise created as a consequence will change in response to changes in the economy and in the competitive landscape. To better understand this, we need to put general impressions into more concrete numbers, which is why works such as “Il valore delle competenze, nuove opportunità per rimettere in moto il lavoro” (The value of skills. New opportunities to jumpstart employment), conducted by CENSIS and presented in Rome at the end of February, are important in helping to understand how Italian businesses are reacting to the crisis. What we see is movement, the actions of enterprises not wanting to stand still in the face of challenges.

Yes, only about 16% of all businesses are growing, and employment numbers are definitely not good, but, according to CENSIS, we are beginning to see a sort of “hidden reorganisation”, with very few businesses actually at a standstill. Indeed, many have chosen to react to the crisis by focusing on skills, not just on the traditional, more technological tools of change. In other words, innovation in organisation and processes (which is being pursued by the vast majority of Italian enterprises) is being followed by the search for new talent and new types of employees and managers, and a great deal is being done to further develop existing personnel in an attempt to integrate the old with the new.

However, what is taking place in Italian businesses and in their cultural approach to the crisis is even more complex. The CENSIS report says that the hiring of new people to replace existing employees or the use of outside specialists is being accompanied by efforts to optimise the organisation, including re-engineering business processes (38%), reorganising working groups (31.7%), adjusting working schedules and shift work (26.5%), and redefining employee assessment and reward systems (28%). The report further states that employee resistance has adversely affected the launch of new processes in many cases (54%).

So is Italian enterprise and culture of enterprise changing? For the most part, it probably is, and CENSIS has pointed to the toils of change, the drive towards that which is new, resistance of the old, and the will for the culture of enterprise to improve and to become more modern, all without forgetting that the old often also has many good points. It may be a burden, but its presence is still certainly felt. CENSIS makes another important observation about Italy’s industrial reorganisation, that it would appear to have three sides: one defensive, one expansionary, and one international.

Dal valore delle competenze, nuove opportunità per rimettere in moto il lavoro.  

Final Report CENSIS, February 2014

Innovation wins, but innovating is not enough, or rather there must be the capacity for innovating, i.e. effectively circulating the results of research and development within the company and then on the market. In other words simply owning an R&D facility is not a guarantee of success. Instead it can also turn into the waiting room of failure. What is needed then?

For Alfonso Gambardella innovation left to its own devices is rarely a guarantee of success for a company that seeks growth. In his Innovazione e sviluppo. Miti da sfatare, realtà da costruire published recently Gambardella explains that it is necessary to know how to apply R&D and it is often R&D itself which takes on the features of a myth to be debunked at the time when it becomes a panacea for all corporate ills. Naturally, the author points out, R&D is very important and should be carried out more and better. What makes the difference however is that which Gambardella calls the “ecosystem” of the company. Without innovative demand, adequate organisational models, infrastructure and entrepreneurship of a certain level, R&D counts for little and can even be damaging.

Yet Gambardella does not stop here and explains further that today we are faced with a bottleneck: we are able to produce and explore many industrial projects and ideas yet we still know very little about how to discover whether these ideas can really be of interest, becoming successful products on the market. 

The role of R&D in a company thus becomes a cultural factor as well as a management and technological one.

Thus two conclusions are drawn in the book. Capital and labour are essential elements in the growth of our companies yet it is also necessary to concentrate on “invisible factors” such as the quality of the work itself and the improvement in managerial capabilities. Secondly it is important for more attention to be placed not only on research & development and innovation per se and for its own sake but above all on the improvement of the ability to translate innovations into real uses on the market and more generally the search, also for existing technologies, for economically relevant applications. 

Inventing light bulbs without electricity is still an important and interesting thesis. 

Innovazione e sviluppo. Miti da sfatare, realtà da costruire 

Alfonso Gambardella 

Egea, 2013

“Restarting from school” is a claim by Italian premier Matteo Renzi and among the priorities of his government’s plans. Urgent reform after a long period when education was gradually alienated from political policies and hit by strict public spending cuts. As well as a long-term strategic decision if Italy is to be given solid development prospects in terms of quantity (with higher growth of the GDP) and above all of quality (the “balanced and sustainable well-being” which the statistics body Istat has begun to evaluate). A lucky coincidence: a few days ago Italian TV channel Rai1 broadcast the drama about Alberto Manzi, the teacher in the programme Non è mai troppo tardi [“It’s never too late”], a success from the early Sixties which taught millions of Italians, hitherto illiterate, to read and write. A cultural and civil choice by an Italy pursuing dignity and freedom in a TV programme. Its current rerun is an excellent idea which has gained critical and public acclaim. A commendable suggestion at a time when the knowledge economy triumphs: without good education there is no competition worthy of the name, throughout the country as a corporation. Furthermore without quality training in knowledge and critical thought there is no democracy worthy of the name. Teacher Manzi was a good endorser or better still an intelligent interpreter of the positive links between education, citizenship (with the system of correlation between rights and duties) and dynamic economic growth, exactly fifty years ago. What about today?

This is an ignorant country, alas. Italy, with 5% of the population held back by instrumental illiteracy (i.e. unable to read or write) and, worse still, with 33% of the population functionally illiterate, i.e. unable to understand a newspaper article, a public speech or an instructions sheet (in other words one Italian out of three is unable to participate in social and professional living in which words carry weight). Things are no better also among the new generations: the Pisa survey tells us that one fifteen-year-old out of five does not understand Italian (in difficulty when faced with words such as esimere [“exempt”], desumere [“deduce”], facezie [“witticisms”], propedeutico [“preparatory”]). The situation is worse still in southern Italy where more than a third of the youth do not understand the instructions leaflet for the flu vaccine).

Italy ranks behind among OECD countries in the number of graduates (just 15%). Italy which has seen a reduction of 90,000 in the number of university enrolments in the past ten years. Italy is also afflicted by the overwhelming numbers of NEETs: 2,200,000 young people between the ages of 15 and 34 who are not studying or working.

The fault lies with a mediocre education system which the rankings of the World Economic Forum put in 70th place, among the 148 countries in the survey. Above all however it is the responsibility of the entire country and its ruling classes who have devalued education, culture, the role of teachers (low pay, little responsibility, decline in professional and social standing) and the actual function of training, often reducing it to a banal instrument of economistic needs(education consisting of English, computer and business studies for a work force which can rapidly find employment in the world of work), yet thus preventing the strengthening of a virtuous circle between knowledge and skills, educational culture and corporate culture, the true lynchpin of a competitive and sustainable economy.

“Restarting from school” thus means opting for massive investments in buildings (collapsing classrooms, inadequate laboratories, unusable gyms), in equipment (books, computers, broad band, computer tools, research tools and structures), in teachers (quality training, both technical and teacher training: a good teacher does not just know his subject but is a person with a passion for teaching, of which in fact the story of Manzi and many other teachers working today are good examples; and therefore quality recruiting, rewards for merit, adequate pay), in curricula and the relations between education and the world of work.

This is a far-ranging policy to be launched straightaway. “Those who sow dates do not eat dates” says an Arab proverb quoted by Alessandro D’Avenia, first-rate education expert (in La Stampa of 26 February). In other words a decision is needed now about the future face of Italy in the timespan of the next two generations, launching a virtuous system of training and growth. Otherwise, without quality education, there will be no economic and civil growth.

A suitable opportunity has arisen. Italy has the oldest body of teachers in Europe, with 53% of teachers over the age of 50 who therefore will retire in ten or fifteen years’; time. The opportunity should be grasped, in this period, of bringing into education around 400,000 new teachers with proper training for an absolute turnaround in the quality of teaching for the new generations of Italians (quite the opposite of the “amnesties” for casual workers applied to date with less than brilliant results for education as in fact the Pisa data show). We need “the spark of good teachers” as written by Franco Lorenzoni in Il Sole24Ore of 16 February) on the subject of the conversation between a great education expert, Lorenzo Altieri, and his sixteen-year-old grandson Leonardo Menon, who asks ideas and knowledge from education for a good future.

“Investing in cognitive capital will make us rich“ is the suggestion made by Gilberto Corbellini (La Stampa, 26 February) when discussing education, universities and research, i.e. a programme of reforms and investments which add value to the actual strengths of Italy, its culture, roots and the ability to merge humanism and sciences as demonstrated extensively in the country’s history. Going to school and reforming and relaunching schools, staking on human capital and human development, on growth and civilisation.