The term is “techno-entrepreneurship”, and it refers—at least for a certain segment of the business world—to the creation of high-tech firms in any industry and is seen as something of a final frontier in doing business and making businesses, the final step in the evolution of the modern entrepreneur, who does everything through the use of technology while not forgetting, of course, the basics of what it means to be an entrepreneur.

Francois Therin, with the help of a healthy dose of experts in the field, summarises, in just 18 steps, both the basics to being an entrepreneur and, above all, what it takes to be able to call yourself a “techno-entrepreneur”. 

Therin takes readers of his “Handbook of Research on Techno-Entrepreneurship” (the second edition of which has just been released to bookshops around the world) on a journey that begins with an explanation of the features specific to techno-entrepreneurship before moving on to look into what the family-run business has in common with techno-entrepreneurship, as well as aspects connected to the capitalisation of tech start-ups, challenges and techniques in distribution and marketing, funding options, and connections with the world of education and research. The handbook then explores techno-entrepreneurship as it has manifested in various areas around the world, including China, India, southeast Asia and South America. 

What we get is a sort of map, a road to be followed in order to better understand this unique way of creating a business and a guidebook that serves not so much to understand how to become a techno-entrepreneur, as to better understand who they are and how they work. At 400 pages in length, it’s not exactly light reading, but it is most certainly worth the effort.

Handbook of Research on Techno-Entrepreneurship

Edited by Francois Therin

Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, January 2014

We talk a lot about “culture of enterprise”, but when it comes right down to it, it’s not a concept that can be properly summed up in just a few words. It’s a bit like the concept of time as seen by Saint Augustine, when he wrote, “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.” Indeed, it’s already hard enough to explain what “culture” is, so when we add the concept of “enterprise”, what we get is intriguing, but it is difficult to encapsulate in a single definition. Nonetheless, it is this concept of the culture of enterprise on which a great many ideas in the fields of organisation, management and consulting are based.

In “Theory vs. Practice: A Study of Business Consultants and Their Utilization of Corporate Culture in Daily Practice”, Kathy Brady and William Lowell (University of Wisconsin-Whitewater) have sought to tackle the issue beginning with practical experience and then adding a dose of theory. Their study is based on an empirical survey of business consultants and business leaders in order to better understand the broad concept of “corporate culture”.  An analysis of the data gathered then showed that, despite making an intensive use of corporate culture in their jobs, not only did the consultants and business leaders surveyed not all give the same definition of corporate culture, the definitions they did give varied a great deal. For some, corporate culture is to be found in the leadership of an organisation and their ability to make employees feel involved in the organisation and its growth, to motivate them and to take a positive, constructive approach both to work and to life. For others, true corporate culture lies in the employees themselves and in how much they feel like they are each a part of a bigger whole, in the approach they take to those outside the organisation, and in the (written and unwritten) rules and restrictions that are adopted. Others said that corporate culture is to be found in the company’s “mission”, in the manner in which they develop their business, in their systems for developing people, and much more.

In the end, the authors come to a tentative definition: “Like a modern Rosetta stone, corporate culture resides in the behavioural symbols of an organization.”

One thing can be said for “Theory vs. Practice”: it’s an interesting exploration of something that is like time to Saint Augustine. We all know what it is, but no one knows how to explain it well.

Theory vs. Practice: A Study of Business Consultants and Their Utilization of Corporate Culture in Daily Practice 

Kathy Brady, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater 

William Lowell, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater  Journal of Practical Consulting, Vol. 5 Iss. 1, 2014

Businesses seek skills that few individuals possess, so one highly pragmatic solution to this problem is to do the training in-house. A popular trend in the US in this regard, and one that is now on the rise in Italy, is the “corporate university”.

The latest statistics published in the 2014 report of the International Labour Organization (ILO), which show that the economic recovery that is currently under way is failing to create new jobs quickly, further reiterate the gap that exists between education (both universities and vocational schools) and the job market (source: Il Sole24Ore, 21 January). Entitled “Global Employment Trends 2014: The risk of a jobless recovery”, the report clearly points to an increase in unemployment throughout the world. In Italy, the situation is expected to remain critical for quite some time to come, with unemployment having risen from 10.7% in 2012 to 12.2% in 2013, a figure which is expected to climb to 12.6% in 2014 and to 12.7% by 2015. In 2007, before the worst of the Great Crisis, unemployment was at just 6.1%. Jobs are being lost, as are professional skills, as both service and manufacturing firms close their doors, and with them opportunities are disappearing for large part of the young people who are now entering the job market. 

In recent years, many paradigms of business have undergone radical change (as lifestyles and consumption habits have changed in response to the crisis), but education and other strategies for adapting to the job market have not kept up with this change. This is not only a matter of culture, but also reflects a lack of investment. According to the ILO, OECD nations should be allocating at least 1.1% of GDP to funding efforts to better match supply and demand in the job market, whereas the average is currently at just 0.6% (with the exception of several nations in northern Europe, namely Germany, the Netherlands, France, Austria, Belgium, Finland and Denmark, which all surpass the minimum threshold recommended by the ILO). In short, there is a lack of education, a lack of skills, and no jobs.

The figures published by the ILO, backed by a study presented by McKinsey & Company in Brussels in January (including an introduction that bore the heading “Europe’s rocky journey from education to employment”), also confirm the alarming fact that Italy is actually lagging behind the rest of the EU nations studied, with 47% of all businesses stating that they are unable to find the skills they need. In other words, nearly half of all businesses are unable to grow at the pace they would like due to a lack of workers, a lack of education and specific skills, and a lack of the tools that are in demand among the businesses that are wanting to hire (for example, just 23% of Italians looking for work possess English skills at the level needed by potential employers).

The situation in Italy is critical precisely in this “knowledge economy” in which human capital and advanced skills are the leading means of staying competitive. Measures being implemented by the Italian government (based on EU recommendations) to promote career training and internships are an initial response to help close this gap, but it is closing all too slowly. 

As such, businesses are taking matters into their own hands in the form of the corporate university, an innovative educational tool to create better jobs which has two goals: to train new hires and to provide lifelong education for middle and upper management in order to keep pace with changes in processes, products and the marketplace. Already common in the US (there were already more than 1,000 corporate universities in 1997, and the number is expected to reach 4,000 by 2015), the phenomenon is now on the rise in Italy, where Assoknowledge (an association within Confindustria) estimates there are already 39 corporate universities within organisations both large (e.g. Eni, Enel, Pirelli, Ferrero, Barilla, Generali and others) and not so large, such as the automotive firm Landi Renzo and the engineering firm Lombardini.

And what do they teach? Both technical subjects related strictly to production and more generalised topics that include leadership, problem-solving, team-building, communication, economics, safety, and even environmental issues. In other words, strategies for enhancing the culture of enterprise and for providing employees with both skills related to production processes and, above all, skills needed in order to face today’s rapidly changing world – the ability to deal with complexity and to put decisions into action in an organisation’s various business processes. 

Within Pirelli’s school of management and our professional academies (in which most of the training is handled in-house after having “trained the trainers”), both skilled blue-collar workers and for up-and-coming managers receive training that focuses on quality and safety, production processes, the supply chain, finance, management and operations, as well as on topics such as “driving change”, diversity management (which is crucial in a large multinational organisation), leadership, creating value, and the values that Pirelli has taken on over the course of the organisation’s long history and gradually adapted to the changing times. The Pirelli experience is unique among corporate universities, such that it has become one of the benchmarks in the open discussion taking place within Confindustria concerning how to innovate in education in order to meet the needs of today’s businesses.

The message is clear. Memory and a constant quest for innovation in both culture and technology. Training people and giving them the tools they need to get by in a new world. And isn’t that what education is all about?  

Where are we now? Where do we want to go? For a business, right from the very culture of its organisation, the answers to these two questions are the keys to building an effective strategy for facing both the current crisis and an ongoing economy that will always have its ups and its downs.  Having a clear idea where you are and where you want to go is no easy task.  There is no universal manual to guide you on your way, but what can be helpful—and what is needed to build and develop a sound corporate culture—are explanations of the present context in which your business is currently operating and of the limitations within which you must make business decisions.

Aspenia 63, the latest issue of the international business quarterly of the Aspen Institute Italia, can help in that regard,  starting with one of its cover headlines: “America pacifica. Cina asiatica” (literally: “Pacific America. Asian China”). Indeed, the articles contained in this issue answer the two questions we asked at the beginning: where are we, and where are we going? 

We are provided with a general overview in the editorial by Marta Dassù, entitled “I nuovi punti cardinali” (The new cardinal points), in which she explains that  the world’s two largest economies of the 21st century, the U.S. and China, both overlook the Pacific Ocean, as do many nations that have been posting the highest rates of growth in recent years. Since the 1990s, the ties between the U.S. and China have become so closely intertwined as to border on an actual symbiosis, as strange as that may sound from a political and ideological standpoint. As such, it is essential for all businesses, even if operating in a manner that may appear extraneous to such matters, to understand the current relationship between these two nations, especially because the world is changing and, as described in the editorial, the pull of the Asian giant is now, at least in certain industries, comparable to that of the U.S. This should also be something for Italian manufacturing to ponder, as it is at the centre of stressors, models and other situations that are just as different as those of the U.S. are from China.

Aspenia 63, therefore, offers up ideas for reflection and different maps of our current reality. It’s not a manual of international politics for business people, but it is certainly a sort of journal full of snapshots that will help businesses to find their way.

One of the conclusions readers will come to as they peruse the pages of this issue is that, while the U.S. is implementing its own strategies with a cautious ‘Asian pivot’, China is pursuing its strategies with more of a ‘European pivot’, judging from the level of investment flowing into the continent, and is broadening its horizons even further into Africa and Latin America. These two formations are something that businesses everywhere should pay close attention to. 

Aspenia 63. Dove Est incontra Ovest 

Various contributors.

Aspen Institute Italia, no. 63, January 2014. 

Nature or nurture? Of course it has at least something to do with the individual, but no entrepreneur is an island. To be successful, it takes context; it takes circumstances, and it takes other men and women. A business is a community, not an individual.

“The entrepreneur’s ‘resource potential’ and the organic square of entrepreneurship: definition and application to the French case”, by Dimitri Uzunidis, Sophie Boutillier and Blandine Laperche (and recently published in the Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship), takes a close look at this intersection of individual potential, conditioning and social opportunity that eventually gives life to an entrepreneur and his business. It makes for an interesting study, one that starts from a specific theory and then looks at a practical case study of businesses in France.

As the authors explain, the purpose of this work is to study the origin of the entrepreneur and the conditions required for success. It all begins with the individual before then seeking to understand what makes up the entrepreneur’s “resource potential”. So one may not be born an entrepreneur, but it does take something in order to get started—a union of knowledge, character, relationships and financial resources. Then comes all the rest—what really brings this potential to the fore and allows it to develop—the socio-economic context that Uzunidis, Boutillier and Laperche describe in an intriguing manner, as the “organic square of entrepreneurship”, i.e. a virtual setting in which the entrepreneur’s potential, the marketplace, the layout of the economy and public policy all come together. Or coming back to our initial idea, even the most talented entrepreneurs can’t do it all on their own.

This is all then “tested” on the French economy and system of enterprise by analysing the practical implications of this theory. Then, through a series of statistical calculations, the authors determine why and how French entrepreneurs come to be and then further develop.

But the work of Uzunidis et al. is also interesting for another idea that it offers. Looking at the conditions needed for an entrepreneur to be born, the authors explain that the more prominent the entrepreneur on the economic scene, the more important these conditions become. One line from the paper is particularly striking: “The entrepreneur is also at the heart of the political debate, his existence and durability being considered as the reason for economic growth.”

The entrepreneur’s ‘resource potential’ and the organic square of entrepreneurship: definition and application to the French case

Dimitri Uzunidis, Sophie Boutillier, Blandine Laperche

Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship 2014, 3:1

Lawfulness is a key asset in the competitiveness of a nation, an essential tool in both social and economic development, as reiterated by the Bank of Italy’s director general, Salvatore Rossi. It is a principle of sound democracy and in the relationship between a government and its citizenry, but it is also a condition for fair competition in business and for a positive culture in a transparent, well-regulated marketplace. This is why Assolombarda insists on lawfulness as a cornerstone of projects to drive the Milan area forward (“far volare Milano”, literally: to make Milan fly) and to make the metropolitan area a driver of innovation and economic growth for all of Italy.  Lawfulness as a means of achieving efficiency and efficacy in the justice system and as a means of combatting organised crime.

Presented on 18 January by court president Livia Pomodoro, the 2013 social responsibility report of the Milan Tribunal has a fitting title, “Fare giustizia” (literally: Doing justice), and equally fitting photo of a construction site on its cover, symbolising the attitude typical of Milan of being constantly under construction on a quest to continue improving. Inside, the report speaks to the relationship between the workings of justice and the attractiveness, competitiveness and the quality of life and of the job market in a given area, while also emphasising the open dialog between the courts, the other institutions and all of the various stakeholders (e.g. associations, businesses, unions and social partners in general) and looking at the performance of the Milan justice machine as compared to the Italian average, as well as to the justice systems in other countries where things work better than here.

Take, for example, the time it takes to settle a civil dispute in a Milan court of first instance: 296 days, 60 more than the average of 238 for all OECD countries, but still well below the Italian average of 564 days. Greater efficiency, but still not enough according to the court’s social responsibility report. Efficacy is to be improved, as well, with sentencing needing to be not only faster, but also able to actually ensure that justice is done. Much has been done in Milan to computerise processes, to promote the settling of disputes out of court, to work through the backlog of cases, and to improve the efficiency of the corporate-law court system, but there is still much that needs to be done. Everybody knows it, and businesses and industry associations are ready to lend a hand and to contribute their ideas.

There is also another area in which Assolombarda is focusing its efforts concerning lawfulness. The association has launched a series of initiatives to protect businesses from the unfair competition coming from organised crime and has declared (in Corriere della Sera on 11 January) its support for the anti-mafia efforts of the Milan public prosecutor’s office and their investigations into the perverse relationship between the organised-crime families of the ‘Ndrangheta and unscrupulous business people looking for illegal shortcuts in business.

Competition is a cornerstone of any good culture of enterprise, so long as that competition is open, follows the rules, and is played out in line with the underlying principles of a fair market, i.e. good quality, the best price, the most innovative product, and the most efficient service. This is nothing like what happens in a mafia-run business, where many other elements come into play, such as: violence in dealing with competitors and strong-arming suppliers; bribing public officials; misrepresentation in employee relations and relations based on threats and the frequent use of “off-book” workers; tax evasion; and “black-market” lending of laundered money that is easy to obtain and comes at a very low cost. “The mafia gives bread and death,” penned a courageous newspaper, L’Ora, in 1958 for the first of its documented major inquiries into organised crime: the bread of a broken, distorted economy, and death for those who don’t fall in line.

Despite successful court investigations, criminal trials and various preventive measures, organised crime continues to taint Italy’s economic fabric, and not only in the south (in regions like Sicily, Calabria, Campania and parts of Puglia), but also in the metropolitan areas of northern Italy where most of the nation’s wealth is concentrated (“The ‘palm-tree line’ is moving north,” Leonardo Sciascia famously warned), and in Milan this could even threaten the work being done for Expo2015, as well as other major investments and public works that mafia families have had their eye on for some time. As such, authorities were right to sound the alarm and take preventive measures against the rise of organised crime, and these are efforts that should continue and be further strengthened beyond the standard bureaucratic obligations of anti-mafia certification.

It would also be wise for businesses and industry associations to work hard to increase awareness of these issues throughout enterprise. In times of crisis, some may well be tempted to accept an offer of help coming, directly or indirectly, from a mafia boss or family in the form of easy credit from outside the banking system or the silencing of a tough competitor or aggressive trade union. As Assolombarda has clearly stated, shortcuts will not be tolerated, and shortcuts can be dangerous. Working with the mob is like heading down a blind alley. Once you’re in, there’s no way out, and the unscrupulous businessman has no choice but to support the interests of the mafia and, often, to lose everything he has. “Bread and death” indeed.

Even a business has a story to tell. There are plenty of examples, both good and bad, which makes storytelling in business a delicate matter. It’s all too easy to slip into the mundane or get stuck in the “sap”. Nonetheless, there are a great many stories of business that are well told, but we need a guidebook or tested approach to put us on the right path, and “Narrativa d’impresa. Per essere ed essere visti&rdqurdquo; (Business storytelling. Being and being seen), edited by Maurizio Matrone and Davide Pinardi for Franco Angeli, is just the thing.

With 240 pages chock full of examples, the book takes a systematic look at stories in business and starts from an underlying observation: for businesses, organisations and any other community of individuals in need of a unifying ethic, storytelling is indispensable. This collection of stories demonstrates at least two purposes of storytelling, that of telling stories in order “to be” and “to be seen”, because it is from the story of a business that the organisation gets its culture and its very awareness of existing, and it is that same story that determines how the company is to be seen by the outside world.

So storytelling is a powerful tool in business, but it is also a dangerous one to be wielded with care because, as mentioned at the beginning, it can run out of control and thereby misshape, deceive, distract and lead to ruin. 

Edited by Matrone (author, training consultant and expert in business storytelling) and Pinardi (author and professor of Narration Techniques at Politecnico di Milano), the work offers up both case studies and theory surrounding topics such as self-telling, brand-telling, story-selling, the “business novel”, and telling a good business story. It includes both concepts and practical tools, as well as a wealth of contributions by consultants, trainers, business owners and other experts in business storytelling, all to be enjoyed like a good novel, a movie or epic poetry. It’s got it all, from the great classics of manufacturing to contemporary stories of technology and healthcare. There are stories of Polenghi and Cartier, Barilla and Guinness, and even Pirelli, Fiat, General Electric, Westinghouse, Ford, Edison and ENI.

“Narrativa d’impresa” is a book to be read from cover to cover, as all great stories of production and productivity should be.

Narrativa d’impresa. Per essere ed essere visti

Maurizio Matrone, Davide Pinardi

Franco Angeli, 2013.

By now, it should be commonplace in every business, but it’s not. In fact, it seems that, in certain segments, the internet is more of a hindrance, something extraneous to the organisation and that poses questions to which businesses have no answers. And yet it is already present in all business. The internet, Web 2.0, and now Web 3.0, are here and they are here to stay.

But what needs to be done? The Web does come with challenges, but also plenty of opportunity. The first challenge is for an organisation’s management. What changes is how leadership is viewed and how the business is actually organised. “Leadership Challenges in the Context of Web 2.0  Solutions”, by Rafał Kozłowski and Krzysztof Kania (at the University of Economics in Katowice, Poland), is a study that can help shed some light on these concepts and on ways to better deal with them.

According to the authors, “If companies are to stay efficient and competitive, leaders must adopt behaviours, new ICT tools and develop new strategies/ solutions to appeal to Z/Millennium Generation and incoming Web 3.0 challenges.”

The study points to seven changes in the culture of enterprise that should help leaders to understand a company’s needs. First of all, with the use of the Web in an organisation, leadership may be “viewed as an activity rather than a role”, as well as be “considered a collective phenomenon”. It follows, then that “individual leaders now need higher levels of personal development”. This challenge within a challenge brings us to the fourth condition, that the business goes from being organisation-centric towards an organisation in which this singular point of focus gives way to more “network-centric leadership”. But they don’t stop there. In the view of Kozłowski and Kania, organisations must now be seen as “organisms” (change no. 5), rather than as “machines”, and planning and controlling must give way to learning and adapting (change no. 6). The final condition that businesses need in order to properly face the challenges of the Web is then summarised in the seventh change: the individuals within an organisation should no longer see the Web as a tool for solving problems, but as an integral part of their lives (the shift to Generation Z or the Millennium Generation). Food for thought.

Leadership challenges in the context of web 2.0  solutions 

Kozłowski R., Kania K.

Polish Journal of Management Studies, vol. 8, 2013

“Elect Kant to the board” was a brilliant headline in La Stampa (10 January) for an interview by Claudio Gallo with the philosopher and novelist Alain De Botton, explaining how a businessman only thinks of making money and a philosopher seeks to create happiness, therefore the two activities should be combined. De Botton is an original thinker and deals with more or less everything, from architecture to mass communication, religion to sex, corporate philosophies to the basic values of economic and social systems. A renaissance intellectual according to his fans; in other words eclectic. A little too eclectic, hiss the critics, challenging him on account of genericness and even triteness, good for chat shows on entertainment TV. He is definitely a mark of contemporary cultural debate and in fact in early January wrote in the Financial Times that philosophers should be members of the board in companies.

This is no joke but instead the result of reasoning which, as confirmed to La Stampa, can be summed up by saying that our misfortune is not that we have too much capitalism, too much competition, to many profits, too much consumerism. Instead we suffer because we have a rough and underdeveloped version of an economic system which could give us much more. We admire the organisational power of corporations, their ability to guide enormously complex efforts … but we make poor and little use of all this: the pension funds of public employees in Ankara mean that a container carrier ship in the strait of Singapore transports manganese which will be used to make bottle caps opened in a bar in Dublin. Too much, in other words, for so little. He goes on to say that with bottles and caps we’re great, the rest still has to be built. The unfortunate truth is not the inefficiency of capitalism but the fact that its ambitions are so modest.

This is in fact the purpose of philosophers on company boards. To think big and look towards objectives in which the production power of the industry, the richness of the finance, the sophistication of the new technologies can have decisive roles, in order to build a new, different and improved quality of economic and social development, a more complete sustainability of growth.

Adam Smith, moreover, father of modern economics, was a moral philosopher. And as a philosopher he had investigated the relationships between individual interests and the “sympathy” in an etymological sense between the individuals able to weave the support structure of a community.

In the economic crisis, whose effects are still felt all over the world (change to commercial and power balances, new players on the markets of production and consumption, worsening of some social differences but also the emergence of hundreds of millions of people from poverty to the sphere of consumption and rights, drastic change in distribution and content of work, etc.), an in-depth search is underway for a meaning which impacts the basic reasons for producing, trading and consuming. Questions are asked about the ethics of the economy and the system of rights and duties linked to the environment. An in-depth discussion is launched on the intellectual categories and the rules for interpretation which have guided economic and social progress over the centuries (even disputing the actual idea of the positive value of progress and gambling on theories of “happy decrease”). Philosophy issues therefore which reach the actual heart of economics and business.

This is where the cultural challenge that faces us lies. As thinking and enterprising persons. As supporters of the importance of the “polytechnic culture”. In order to tackle it philosophers are needed who know how to handle the tools for analysis and interpretation of economics and science (the intersections between the two dimensions are increasingly frequent, as witnessed by the whole bio-tech world). As well as entrepreneurs and managers able to move beyond the essential yet in any case limited horizon of company accounts, profit and loss account and “value for shareholders”.

Not starting from scratch, not even in Italy. Philosophy is taught well at the politecnici of Milan and Turin, above all as part of the engineering management courses. The lesson by Adriano Olivetti on the good, complex corporate culture is re-read (together with the more sophisticated cultural experiences spread throughout other firms, like Pirelli). Space is also given over in the media to the fact that Sergio Marchionne, who spearheaded the Fiat renaissance, after graduating in law and with a master’s degree in business administration in Canada, completed his philosophy studies at the University of Toronto. Or that Franco Tatò, one of the more brilliant and international top managers, obtained his degree with a theoretical philosophy thesis on Max Weber. Or again that Brunello Cucinelli, a star of Italian-made quality clothing, organises for his employees training courses that start with Plato.

It is therefore possible to overturn, for the economic good, the old commonplace, attributed to Thomas Hobbes, of primum vivere, deinde philosophari: in other words in order to live better philosophising is now essential.

Nobody lives forever, not even companies. They can however at least attempt to live longer. They only need to know how to change, i.e. evolve, mutate, improve, innovate. Above all in “complex” times like the current ones for the economy. 

 

In times like these the capacity for change has to become stronger. These are not however preset and mechanical processes – every company has a different story which is why others’ experience is important. Equally important is reading the some ninety pages written by Paolo Lo Bascio for LUISS University Press which tell of stories of company changes.

 

Racconti del cambiamento. Come le aziende vivono e sopravvivono nei momenti di discontinuità [“Stories of change. How firms live and survive in times of discontinuity”] starts in fact with immortality. It is explained how firms have a natural tendency to believe themselves to be immortal. However success stories, unbeatable strategies and Guinness book of records results make way one day (although not all of a sudden) for the terrible recession disease. This condition leads to another life, if there is the ability to act at the right time.

 

According to Lo Bascio, however, strong treatment is needed, a so-called “turnaround”. A movement which leads to company decisions which require the ability to change customary behaviour and strategies, putting to the test the management and the entire organisation, right down to the last factory worker. 

 

The book shows that a constructive entry in the arena, the capacity for cooperation and that for overcoming predefined work barriers (between factory floor workers, managers and entrepreneurs) constitute the same number of tools which allow an attempt, often successful, to actually change the company where you work, including with major and unexpected changes in action and thought. The cover picture of the work by Lo Bascio is in this respect appealing and significant: a goldfish which leaps from a smaller tank to a larger one. And survives.

 

 

Racconti del cambiamento. Come le aziende vivono e sopravvivono nei momenti di discontinuità

Paolo Lo Bascio

LUISS University Press, 2013