Every firm is a story to be told, a collection of past lives which should be known. In every case and above all when these are innovating firms which have staked on themselves, which have built their balance sheets on the future, their culture on people and on technology. Italy is full of firms like these and they are there for the discovering, as twelve writers did with twelve firms in the Turin area, one with the highest concentration of industry in Italy and also one of those hardest hit by the economic crisis. The exploration was sponsored by the Turin Chamber of Commerce, the Fondazione Human+, the Politecnico and the API, the association which groups together small firms. The result was a book, just under two hundred pages of corporate life.

Imprese d’autore [“Firms d’Auteur”] is the title of the book published by La Stampa which is a collection of twelve stories of corporate life, stories by writers who unearth stories of entrepreneurs, of what they have done in years of work. Not alone but instead with other people – factory workers, technicians, wives, sons and daughters, friends – who have shared a ground-breaking idea (a project in technical and dry terms) and have given their all in order to succeed in fulfilling this idea. Building up a corporate culture structured like a play in twelve acts, similar to thousands of others that are a feature of production in Italy and with the same number of technical discussions in between.

The line-up includes works by authors Stefania Bertola, Younis Tawfik, Enrico Pandiani, Carlo Grande, Giuseppe Culicchia, Alessandro Barbero, Margherita Oggero, Enrico Remmert, Luca Ragagnin, Anna Berra, Alessandro Perissinotto and Bruno Gambarotta who tell of the vicissitudes of small and medium-sized firms such as Amet, Blue Engineering, Corona, Criotec Impianti, Delgrosso, Ergotech, Inkmaker, Lma, Plm Systems, Poker, Sea Marconi and Sinterloy. All firms virtually unknown to the general public yet which hold something that is innovative and winning. Examples told with emotion and involvement which show the Italian way to well-being which has not yet been abandoned.

Imprese d’autore

AA.VV.

La Stampa, 2013.

Family businesses are special, the life of those who work in them and the entrepreneur who created them to the extent that, within certain limits, they are managed by special approaches. It is true that in family businesses, i.e. those created by a family who has invested everything in them, and not only in material terms, there may be an atmosphere different from others. Yet accounts and balance sheets have to be drawn up according to the same rules and the market bows to the same schizophrenia, to the same stimuli, whether it is tackled by a public limited company or a manufacturing company with sole partner, set up by the father and handed down to the son.

Understanding the movements of those which could be called “corporate families” is however important. This is what, from a particular viewpoint, Lori B. Gervais and Roger G. Gervais have done in Maximize What You Have Built. Overlooked issues in family businesses, a study of a few pages which, through a series of interviews with entrepreneurs, managers and consultants of family businesses, identifies the particular entrepreneurial approach with which this type of firm is run.

The two authors explain in a crucial passage that the owners of family businesses have a different genetic make-up. Business for them, more than a way of supplying means of subsistence, is the love of their life and the great plan for supporting their dreams. Dreams therefore and also balance sheets, obviously, and more. According to the analysis in fact there is a strong aspiration within these firms to create opportunities for members of the family.

The interlinking of corporate problems and family questions, production needs and personal emotions, shapes this particular type of business. However the dyscrasia between “family” goals and “corporate” goals at times becomes too extensive and unsustainable or in any case risky. Without mentioning, as instead the study does, the aspects linked to the handover from one generation to another.

Corporate equilibrium and corporate culture are therefore brought into discussion and display their complete fragility.

Lori B. Gervais and Roger G. Gervais seek to understand how and why and the way of solving this, succeeding in mapping out the situation of many family businesses with the effective image of the possible drawing of a line in the sand which nobody wants to cross.

Maximize What You Have Built. Overlooked issues in family businesses

Lori B. Gervais, Roger G. Gervais

The Gervais Group, Robert W. Baird & Co.

April 2013

A cute little mouse hides under the Pirelli hot water bottle in the place of Boccasile’s chick, Ezio Bonini’s fish now swim together with a pair of flippers, and the body of the girl wearing Alberto Bianchi’s cap will at last be revealed… What if the old Pirelli advertisements were suddenly transformed?

The fifth-year students of the Liceo Artistico Umberto Boccioni in Milan tried revisiting and reinventing the sketches of the great artists who made Pirelli’s visual communication famous.

The inspiration and the ideas they picked up during their recent visit to the Pirelli Foundation led to their original reformulations and unusual points of view, which came from an in-depth examination of the history of Pirelli graphics and the opportunity they were given to take a close-up look at the beauty of the works in the archive.

Their stunning works are on display at the school. For further information, please visit www.liceoartisticoboccioni.it

Meanwhile, congratulations to all those involved!

Italy of the 1960s was full of life. Ironically enough, 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the height of Italy’s economic boom. And it was that same year, 1963, in which an Italian, Giulio Natta, was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry for his work that led to the discovery of “isotactic polypropylene”, a plastic polymer that was to revolutionise the daily lives of millions of Italians under the trade name Moplen. With new products came new habits, as lauded by comedian Gino Bramieri, who, for the Italian Carosello TV commercials, was shown using all sorts of objects – from buckets and strainers to bottles and toys – all practical, clean and unbreakable, before imploring, “Now ladies, / take heed: / it’s Moplen / that you need.”

That Moplen was the result of a virtuous partnership launched in the early 1950s between Politecnico di Milano and Montecatini, the embodiment of cutting-edge academic research and industrial application coming in the wake of testing that had begun in the late 1930s by Natta himself involving synthetic rubber (in collaboration, at that time, with Politecnico and Pirelli). This proved to be an important, exemplary partnership because it was this collaboration between industry and university research that enabled Natta and his colleagues to take radical steps forward with the work of the German researcher Carl Ziegler (who was awarded the Nobel Prize together with Natta), which would otherwise have remained mere theory.

Italy, a hotbed of manufacturing excellence and a land suited to all that is both beautiful and well made. The epitome of a culture of enterprise that united flair and creativity with mass production. Cutting-edge technology, design, market strategy and financial success all revolved around one key concept: education and research lead to development, wealth, employment and a better quality of life.

Over time, Italy lost this momentum in applied research, wasting opportunities, cutting back on resources, and even allowing the failure of great, cutting-edge organisations such as the international genetics and biophysics lab established in Naples in 1961 by great minds like Adriano Buzzati, Luca Cavalli Sforza and Franco Graziosi, but which was shut down by the unbearable hostility of bureaucrats and academics (an affair also recalled in a book by Francesco Cassata, L’Italia intelligente, published by Donzelli). Statistics now show that, at just 1% of private and public-sector investment going to research, Italy is lagging behind the rest of Europe, and it is this short-sighted decision to sacrifice research, innovation and education (in favour of unproductive, nepotistic public spending) that is playing a key role in the country’s stagnation over the last twenty years and in the current, dramatic recession.

So looking back on the economic boom of the 1950s and 60s, the work of Natta, and the dynamism of Italian industry is not a mere walk down memory lane, but an attempt to walk in the footsteps of those who made dynamic, international development strategies that were both well thought out and sustainable over time during those years of such great hope and enterprise. An attempt to make forward-looking economic and industrial policies and to rebuild competitiveness. Of course, no one is under the illusion that Italy can become like Israel, where 5% of GDP goes to research and development (and which boasts a flourishing, competitive and high-tech economy), but we can – and, indeed, must – at least double the miserable 1% at which the country is currently languishing.

“If I see any cuts in education and research, I will step down,” proclaimed the Italian Prime Minister, Enrico Letta, in his first speeches as the country’s leader. Great. Or, at least, better than nothing. But Italy needs a bit more than that. We need the opposite of cuts. We need new, long-term investment and a new culture of development.

Beauty is made in Italy, the embodiment of the nation’s culture of enterprise and our success around the world. But how exactly does one achieve this goal? Because good financials are not made of ideals alone. Once again, an expert guide is what we need.

This is what Cristiano Ciappei (professor of Corporate Value & Strategy at the University of Florence) and Giovanni Padroni (professor of Business Organisation at the University of Pisa) have attempted to provide in their book “Le imprese nel rilancio competitivo del Made e Service in Italy: settori a confronto” (Business in restoring competitiveness to “Made & Service (sic) in Italy”: industries compared), a manual written from multiple viewpoints and which describes the entrepreneurial skills needed to define the strategies and organisation needed to restore competitiveness in the most typical segments of Italian industry.

“The concept ‘Made & Service (sic) in Italy’ encompasses the businesses that are closely tied to the idea of Italian style, cuisine, art, landscapes, culture, creativity, and a sense of aesthetics and exclusivity,” the work’s two editors explain. “Along side products that are made in Italy, we have added the increasingly important service sector, which includes tourism, culture and the arts, as well as those that are tied more to the Italian territory itself and that, as such, cannot be delocalised.”

This lays the groundwork for the entire book, which is organised into three parts. The first looks into the paths that businesses in the fashion, food and agriculture industries have taken in an attempt to renovate and includes related case studies. The second part analyses the corporate applications of the “integral cultural system” and what happens when, in a given region, we begin to see the development of systems of tourism, art and culture in which businesses play a leading role. The book concludes with a study of the role that outsourcing and relationship management within the supply chain play in stimulating the Italian economy starting with those typical Italian products and services.

This work by Ciappei and Padroni is weighty and complex, but is an essential read for those looking for the tools needed to better understand the Italian culture of enterprise.

Le imprese nel rilancio competitivo del Made e Service in Italy: settori a confronto

Cristiano Ciappei & Giovanni Padroni

Franco Angeli, 2013

Kick start businesses. Give growth and development a boost. Take a fresh look at business management, profits and labour. All of these are goals that many attempt to reach and which are closely tied to industrial and business ethics, to social responsibility in enterprise and, finally, to an approach to aspects of industry and society that are less about the material and more about mankind.

This is the crux of the matter that Laura Salvan (a student at Ca’ Foscari) discusses in Cultural responsibility. Small steps to restore anthropology in economic behaviour. Interviews and best practices, a work that, in the words of Salvan herself, “ponders the concept of cultural responsibility (CR), i.e. a combination of ‘culture’ and ‘responsibility’.  Responsibility is the ethical duty to ensure that both present and future generations will have the opportunity to meet their own needs, achieve their own goals and live lives that they can appreciate. Culture, in the anthropological sense, sees individuals as a set of beliefs, symbolism, spirituality, imagination and rationality that enables them to represent the world around them within the various social contexts that arise.”

However, this no mere academic work that Salvan has authored, but rather an exploration of both theory and practice that seeks to bring together cultural responsibility and the custom – where it already exists – of corporate social responsibility (CSR).

“It could be said that CR is an implication of CSR in that it considers the cultural development of the individual to be the primary goal of any economic behaviour.” This is a view that could be seen as forward-looking if we consider many areas of areas of industry, both in Italy and abroad, and if we limit ourselves to today’s challenging economy, but it assumes a different connotation if we strive to see beyond our current context.

Salvan has based this work on a series of principles and practical examples taken from a series of interviews and from a number of social and business case studies, such as of Libera and Banca Popolare Etica S.p.A. and of various foundations.

Her conclusion is in the form of a proposal: “Basing modern economic behaviour on anthropology through forms of social cooperation could be one of the ways out of the crisis in which we are currently mired.”

Cultural Responsibility. Small steps to restore anthropology in economic behaviour. Interviews and best practices

Laura Salvan

Ca’ Foscari – Undergraduate Studies in Management & Economics of Culture and the Arts (EGArt), 2011/2012.

It was Steve Jobs who, in a speech to graduating university students, recommended that we be “foolish” (as well as “hungry”) in building our future, as innovators and as entrepreneurs. Italian Prime Minister, Enrico Letta, also spoke of follia visionaria (visionary folly) to describe the attitude that his challenged, controversial government would need in facing the dramatic Italian crisis – a dreadful tangle of politics and economics. Folly. The other, non-conformist side of the truth. The ability to see things differently, to surprise, to be eccentric and radically original. All skills that are perfectly suited to the entrepreneur, whose key to action is “innovation”. Culture of enterprise as an intelligent, audacious cultivation of a good sort of folly? Food for thought. As is the radical criticism of an ideology that has been leaving its mark on the world since the 1980s, that of extreme individualism. Giovanni Gozzini, in his book La mutazione individualista – Gli italiani e la television 1954-2011 (The individualist mutation – Italians and television 1954-2011), tells of the downslide of a nation in which (the already fragile) social responsibility and spirit of community have been cut into by a focus on the individual and on small groups that is without any social ethics and is moved by certain communicative processes. Aldo Bonomi, in his insightful Sunday segment in Il Sole24Ore, “Microcosmi”, recalls Tom Wolfe’s critical definition of the “Me Decade” and suggests that, in order for the Italian economy to recover, we need to reassess the capacity for small and medium enterprise to work together, to organize into districts and value chains, to create original synergies between human capital, individual enterprise, and the social capital of networks both old and new. Sounds good. A path to follow while reflecting on that wise, foolish (if that’s not an oxymoron) entrepreneur. And examples? There is that of Brunello Cucinelli, owner of one of the most innovative and prestigious textile and clothing firms, who spoke to Il Sole24Ore (5 May 2013, Sunday edition) about his passion for Marco Aurelio, an emperor and a philosopher, and for St. Benedict, who once told an abbot, “Be rigorous and kind. Be a loving father, but also a demanding teacher.” And what’s the rule for being a good entrepreneur? According to Cucinelli, “Respect for others and the moralisation of public life. But also the need to unite rationalism with an increasingly massive dose of passion and inventiveness.” In other words, stay foolish.

There was once Taylor (Frederick) and Taylorism, that scientific organisation of labour which, whether we like it or not, made large inroads in industry and manufacturing in particular. Today we have the Web and globalisation, collaboration which extends horizontally, that socialisation of business organisation which has also changed its culture. But a lot still needs to be studied better, understood, assimilated and circulated.

This is what Marco Minghetti writes in his L’intelligenza collaborativa. Verso la social organization, [“Collaborative Intelligence. Towards Social Organisation”] it serves in fact for understanding and use, and circulation.

The basic idea is that the “new forms of organisation” achieve coordination without centralisation, while power lies in skills and not in roles and so-called shared knowledge triumphs over authoritarianism. This is “social organisation”, introduced and widespread in some companies and industries, but not yet in others.

Minghetti’s book is a sort of “strategic guide” to this subject. It serves for tackling the change in companies arising from the use of social media and processes of collaboration emerging from the lower level. According to the author all this constitutes in firms first of all a cultural, organisational and strategic challenge ahead of a technological one, which involves everyone, from directors to deliverymen. However L’intelligenza collaborativa is not just a handbook, it is also a collection of testimonies from managers from different sectors who tell of the various phases of the organisational transformation of the firms where they have worked. Thus there are contributions from managers of Cisco, Gucci, Pirelli, Nokia, Mip, Telecom Italia, HERA, Ottica Avanzi, Vodafone, Unicredit, Banca Ifis, Microsoft, Heineken, IBM Italia and Bosch. The three parts into which the book is structured – the phases necessary for transformation, the change of human resources and the key principles around which everything revolves – are therefore all worth reading.

L’intelligenza collaborativa. Verso la social organization

Marco Minghetti

Egea, 2013

Entrepreneurs are the same the world over, although identical companies obviously cannot be found. However the spirit of enterprise, glorified by numerous theorists and a reality in thousands of firms, effectively has common features which cross over borders and continents. Nevertheless there is not a great deal of proof of this.

This is what makes it interesting to read Achievement Motivation, Strategic Orientations, and Business Performance in Entrepreneurial Firms: How Different are Japanese and Americans Founders?, a study carried out by four authors scattered among three research institutes: Rohit Deshpandé, Amir Grinstein from Ben-Gurion University, Sang-Hoon Kim from Seoul National University and Elie Ofek from Harvard.

The aim of the research was to understand whether there are differences in strategic decisions and in orientations, as well as in the results, between American and Japanese firms, with special focus on the motivation of the so-called “founders” of the same firms. Nothing theoretical however, seeing that the analysis was performed with a survey among 397 Japanese and 189 American “founders”.

The results in some respects were surprising. Although located in culturally different countries, the Japanese and US entrepreneurs have in fact similar styles which lead to subsequent decisions.

The authors give examples. In Japan and the USA success always comes via customer care and costs limitation; while the focus on levels of technology is inversely proportional to the profitability levels.

Above all however, what emerges from the over 500 interviews is that enterprising spirit which leads people of different cultures and lifestyles to the same decision and behaviour modes. An instinct, a feeling, drive, initiative which are virtually identical connotations of entrepreneurs in any part of the world. A kind of pervasive magic which surprises and is repeated each day.

Achievement Motivation, Strategic Orientations, and Business Performance in Entrepreneurial Firms: How Different are Japanese and Americans Founders?

Rohit Deshpandé, Amir Grinstein, Sang-Hoon Kim and Elie Ofek

International Marketing Review, Volume 30/3, 2013.

The “manufacturers’ pact” represents a key move on the panorama of industrial relations in Italy: not only a political signal from entrepreneurs and trade unions, but also a specific commitment to formulating corporate agreements aimed at boosting competitiveness, improving productivity and fostering growth, quality and innovation. There is also another aspect to the pact,  which involves applying pressure and lobbying the government, parliament and political parties for economic policies that will favour the forces responsible for the creation of wealth: the companies.

The idea of a “manufacturers’ pact” is not a new one: it appeared in political debate in Italy in the crisis years of the ‘70s, above all in terms of analysis and proposals – albeit diverse – presented by the PCI led by Enrico Berlinguer and the PRI led by Ugo La Malfa. It represented a stand against the trend, which was widespread even back then, for cronyism in policy-making (something which characterised above all areas close to the DC). Now the pact is back, but in a new guise, championed by Confindustria and CGIL, CISL and UIL (which, despite their limits and contradictions, represent the world of manufacturing). And there was physical evidence of this too, during the May Day celebrations in Bologna and Treviso: on stage at the events alongside the trade union leaders were representatives of Confindustria, Confartigianato, CNA and Lega delle cooperative, company men in other words.

So what are the pact’s signatories asking for? Measures to kick-start the economy, focusing on industry and manufacturing first and foremost and making good use of fiscal leverage to foster innovation, research, an international approach, exports and competitiveness. Less fiscal pressure and simpler taxation for those in business and manufacturing: not general, generic tax cuts, but strategic industrial policies based on intelligent, selective taxation. The measures meet with the approval of the OECD: “The priority for Italy”, asserts OECD Secretary General Angel Gurruia, “is to reduce taxes on companies and labour”. With the manufacturers in mind.