The stories from the world of Pirelli in April 2018 – the month of the Salone del Mobile and Milan Design Week – just had to take a look at those great designers who, in the second half of the twentieth century, helped shape the image of Pirelli by creating the display installations for trade fairs and exhibitions.

We have already seen how, with his “labyrinth” for the Pirelli Coria sole, Bruno Munari made his mark on many of the footwear trade fairs in Vigevano. It was actually one of these, in 1958, that saw the intervention of another of the greatest names of international design: that of Bob Noorda. The army of little stylised figures marching beneath the words “Walk Pirelli” immediately became the symbol of rubber soles: “health has dry feet”. We again find the Dutch artist, who was famous for his graphic precision, at the Paris show in 1960, where he designed the stand for the Pirelli BS3 tyre. And then again at the Turin Car Show that same year, in collaboration with Franco Albini, where he came up with a “story of Pirelli tyres” in the form of a row of circular portholes that formed a timeline of products.

Another name that often crops up in the design of Pirelli stands in the 1950s and 1960s is that of Roberto Menghi, an authentic genius of industrial design. In 1956, together with the great Albe Steiner, Menghi put his name to the pavilion that Sapsa – a Pirelli Group company – devoted to foam rubber at the Milan trade fair. Here, geometrical precision and clean lines were the hallmark of the two Milanese masters of design. An artistic duo, Ilio Negri and Giulio Confalonieri, were coming to the fore at almost the same time in the world of display installations for the Pirelli Group: it was they who created the ingenious display for the Salone del Bambino, the children’s fair at the Teatro dell’Arte di Milano (1959), in the form of toys arranged on an amusing series of dice and domino tiles. The triangular interaction between Menghi, Negri and Confalonieri was to become extremely lively over the years: from the planet-like “constellation” of BS3 tyres at the Turin Show in 1959 to the almost sci-fi parade of plastic containers designed by Menghi and shown in 1961 in the Pirelli-Azienda Monza pavilion at the first IPACK packaging fair in Milan. Together, they also created the tread patterns arranged like sailors in an aquarium at the Frankfurt Show in 1961, and the Cinturato girls photographed by Ugo Mulas for the Paris Show in 1962.

Other names include those of Massimo Vignelli and Ernesto Carboni. It was Vignelli, a Milanese master of design, who created the Pirelli stand at the 1963 Salone del Ciclo e Motociclo (the Milan Motorcycle Show), with the darkness lit up by bright flashes, period photos, and absolute geometric discipline. Tyre treads like trees and lianas in a forest at the Turin Car Show in 1957 were the creation of the eclectic advertising designer Ernesto Carboni from Emilia.

This roundup of great names behind the design of stands devoted to Long P products ends with the brilliant Pino Tovaglia, who worked with the then director of the “Pirelli Propaganda” department, Arrigo Castellani, and designed and created some authentic masterpieces. From the 1956 and 1959 Ciclo e Motociclo events in Milan to the supremely elegant Geneva Car Show in 1962, through to the 1966 Turin Car Show, with the black-and-white geometries of his plates for the “A journey but…” campaign, which he himself created for the Cinturato tyre. It was around this advertising campaign that the Pirelli Foundation based one of its first exhibitions, in 2008, in the spaces of La Triennale di Milano.

Then, at the Paris Car Show in 1967, came a stand that, on its own, sums up a whole artistic period – a whole epoch in the history of advertising: a succession of black and white lines, cut by a red line in the form of a chair. At the centre, just a telephone, black on white. A triumph of Pop Art, and a tribute to the Pirelli Cinturato.

A book that has recently been published narrates how the artistic process resembles the production process and how their combination can lead to innovation

Artistic process and production process are similar paths. Although they appear very distant from one another. They are both the expression of a particular culture. They both have a method through which they take shape and develop. When the first process – i.e. the artistic process –, actually becomes one with the second – the production process –, this can result in highly innovative forms of business that go beyond the canons of innovation tied solely to new technologies. This is the case of Elica – a company in Fabriano which specialises in the production of hoods – and of the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, a foundation named after its founder and which has incorporated the use of contemporary art as an instrument capable of generating innovation in production organisations.Their stories are told in “Innovare l’impresa con l’arte. Il metodo della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli”  (Innovating business with art. The Fondazione Ermanno Casoli method) written by Chiara Paolino, Marcello Smarrelli and Deborah Carè.

The book tries to provide an answer to a single question: how can contemporary art generate innovation in business? The answer is given through the tale of the activities of the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (FEC) with artists, trainers and companies. This is an activity which over the years has developed a work method that combines artists and workers, art professionals and business professionals.

The book then investigates in-depth topics such as the process of learning through art, product and process innovation, and also the situations of interaction between art and management, the creation of opportunities for sharing experiences and information through interventions of art and the relationships between the presence of art in a company and the latter’s competitive edge.

The themes that emerge from the book are therefore the relationship between art and opportunities for renewal of both individual identity and professional identity within organisations, the change in learning processes aimed at innovation, and also the contribution of art in defining a new perspective of company performance.

In other words, Paolino, Smarrelli and Carè look at contemporary art as a key through which it is possible to focus business activities more on the person, on the way they work and rethink their actions and related results. For each topic, the book presents a detailed description of the artistic interventions organised by the Foundation in companies, the managerial implications for effective planning of the same and the results that have been obtained, using a language addressed both to the world of art and to the corporate world.

The beautiful introduction sets the meaning and the tone of the entire book and it reads: “Working with art (…) is a structured process, which implies a dialogue between the artist and the company, capable of bringing into the company a different way of seeing, feeling and operating, one that is perhaps a little destabilising, yet one which all employees are able to reconstruct the sense of”.

Innovare l’impresa con l’arte. Il metodo della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (Innovating business with art. The Fondazione Ermanno Casoli method)

Chiara Paolino , Marcello Smarrelli , Deborah Carè

EGEA, 2018

The great designers who have worked with the “Long-P” brand include one who is still today a top name in international design: Lora Lamm. The “Pirelli for scooters” display sign created by the Swiss artist in 1959 was one of the 180 works on show at La Triennale di Milano for the eleventh edition of the Triennale Design Museum. The girl in the T-shirt with horizontal stripes and blue slacks glancing round from the pillion of a scooter has always been the most iconic image for the Pirelli Motor Scooter. This was a tyre the company created just after the war to get the innovative two-wheeled machine racing to the success it achieved in Italy. Yes, indeed, the scooter – whether a Vespa or a Lambretta – was a tribute to the freedom of modern girls. It is hard not to think of the 1953 film Roman Holiday when looking at this “Audrey Hepburn” revisited by the unrivalled pencil of Lora Lamm, with its light, cheerful touch, part-comic strip, part-naif.

Born in 1928 in the town of Arosa, in the Swiss Grisons, Lora Lamm moved to Milan in 1953 after graduating from the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich. In the scintillating Milan of the early 1950s, she worked with the great hotshots of design such as Studio Boggeri, where Bruno Munari and Ernesto Carboni also worked with Antonio Boggeri. She then moved with Max Huber to the Rinascente advertising office. Lamm arrived at Pirelli in 1958, when Arrigo Castellani, then head of the “Direzione Propaganda”, asked her to come and work as a freelancer. Lora Lamm made a very personal mark on the advertising style of the Long P company, communicating with a quintessentially feminine touch, with gracefulness, simplicity and modernity. After the girl on the scooter, the little girl hugging her hot water bottle in 1960 became equally famous.

Lora Lamm’s technique soon opened up to collage and photomontage, from Scooter Trasporto tyres, with which one could “go to market fully laden”, through to mountain soles to go up “among the edelweiss” and authentic graphic challenges to depict highly technical objects such as the dam expansion joints made by Azienda Articoli Tecnici. It takes just one yellow brushstroke to create a banana, just one line of stars to conjure up a mountain meadow: drawing becomes a virtual frame for the product. And, of course, her art could not fail to include the bicycle: also from 1960 is the advertisement with the girl in a blue T-shirt pedalling delicately and happily in the foreground. A bicycle with Pirelli tyres, of course. Simplicity and the joy of life, freedom and colours reign supreme in the wonderful world of Lora Lamm.

We can call them “designer stands”. In other words, those exhibitions and trade fairs – yesterday the Campionaria di Milano, today the Salone del Mobile, with its Design Week – where the hand of the artist intervenes to give a powerful interpretation to the image of the company being showcased. The creator of the installation is often a designer, who on other occasions lends his own distinctive touch to add greater prestige to the products on show.

This is the case of Bruno Munari and his “labyrinth”, an advertising image created in 1954 to promote the Pirelli Coria sole. Soles and heels had appeared way back in 1889, in the “Catalogue of shaped rubber objects for which the company has the moulds”, and Pirelli continued making them until 1992. But what was the “Coria”, invented in 1951 by one of the many companies working in the Diversified Products sector of the Pirelli Group? It was neither a rubber nor a leather sole, but rather one that combined the two: light, flexible, adherent, waterproof. And, especially, extremely long-lasting. “I haven’t re-soled the shoe – I’ve re-shoed the sole” was the brilliant slogan thought up in 1953 by Joan Jordan for this miracle product.

Also Ezio Bonini worked on the Coria, again in 1953: “withstands the pace of time”, says the footprint walking alongside a precious pocket watch, the hands of which move slowly but inexorably towards 12:44. But it was in 1954 that Bruno Munari made his mark when, to sing the praises of the Coria sole at the Fiera Campionaria in Milan that year, he invented his famous “labyrinth”. This was a graphic itinerary full of traps, but which could easily be overcome by a pair of shoes, naturally protected by Coria soles: waterproof, hygienic, and flexible. And they would last two and a half times as long: it’s like “walking with progress”. An iconic advertisement, and indeed one that entered the collection of MoMA in New York. The collaboration between the designer and Pirelli also included the concept for an advertisement for raincoats, a number of articles for Pirelli magazine and it ultimately led to Zizì the monkey winning the first edition of the Compasso d’Oro. This reinforced foam rubber toy for children was designed by Munari for Pigomma Srl.

So it was in Milan, for the fair that took over the whole city, that the Coria labyrinth was born. Very soon, however, it moved to nearby Vigevano, the absolute capital of shoes, where for many years Pirelli had a stand of its own at the International Footwear Trade Show. The Coria had already made its debut in Vigevano in 1951, beginning to convince customers and trade professionals of its ability to “last longer than a shoe”. In 1955, however, the Pirelli stand in Vigevano reformulated Munari’s original graphic idea and it was a huge sole that dominated the stand at the trade show in 1955, and lots of little soles chasing each other beneath the words “health has dry feet” in the 1956 edition. The age of “alternative” materials, coupled with Salpa leather – neither leather nor rubber – came to Vigevano in 1957. By now, Munari’s labyrinth had become almost a trademark. The 1958 Salone was emblematic: Coria had become an authentic “philosophy of walking”, which produced slogans like “chit-chat does not stop progress: progress walks on Pirelli Coria soles”. At the back of the stand, there was always the sign designed years earlier by Munari. That poster is still in our Historical Archive today.

The generation of Millennials  addressed from the perspective of a production organisation faced with an important cultural change

Adapting to change. And perhaps anticipating it. Those at the helm of a company know that the capacity to anticipate the market, to follow the changes in the external environment quickly, and to be in tune with it are some of the basic principles for the success of any production organisation. All this also applies to what are referred to as the Millennials. According to some forecasts, by 2020, millennials will constitute more than a third of workers at global level.It is therefore to them companies must pay more attention.

To do this, it is useful to read the book edited by Giulio Beronia (Managing Director of HRC Millennials and with lengthy experience in studying and career guidance for youths), based on the consideration that every company will soon find itself having to define effective strategies to build more responsible relationships with young resources and value their characteristics.Hence a twofold endeavour: one addressed to the market and the other addressed to the inside of the business organisation.

Looking more closely at a business organisation, Beronia thus thinks it is necessary to locate within the personnel organisation the figure of the Millennials friendly i.e. a person who is capable of being on the same wavelength as this generation of young people in order to understand them, value them and attract them. This is no easy feat, and the book by Beronia tries to address this starting with an attempt to identify the same components of the Millennials  and then moves on to an examination of the various tools available to understand them and become like them. The book therefore takes into consideration the key aspects related to the definition of future strategies for the management of cultural change and relationships with young people. All with special insights on topics such as talent management, digital innovation, the technological gap, roles within companies, the ability to welcome and so on. It is a cultural change that must be faced with this generation.

The book provides many examples of companies who have already had dealings with Millennials  (perhaps through programmes alternating between school and work), including Widiba Bank, Cassa di Risparmio di Cento, Fabbricadigitale, FS Italiane, Lindt & Sprüngli, RDS Radio Dimensione Suono, BNP Paribas Italy Group, Italo – NTV, Vodafone Italia. The book is written by several authors but it has a leitmotiv underpinning it throughout: the curious and positive approach to a generation of young men and women and then of adults who should be appreciated and therefore known well.

A beautiful sentence by Italo Calvino at the beginning of the book gives you an idea of the level of attention that should be paid to this generation: “Sometimes one who thinks himself incomplete is merely young”.

Millennials Effect. HR & NUove Generazioni (HR & New Generations)

Giulio Beronia (edited by)

Franco Angeli, 2018

Yesterday there was the Fiera Campionaria, today the Salone del Mobile: April in Milan has always been synonymous with design. Not just that of the great names, but also the quintessentially “popular” design of trade fair stands, showcases that communicate to the general public the full commercial power of a company, in the most effective way possible.

The photographic section of our Historical Archive devoted to “trade fairs and exhibitions” contains a photo from 1924: it shows the Pirelli pavilion at the Fiera Campionaria, the Milan trade fair. This is one of the oldest photos, and an almost unique example of how exhibition “design” was viewed almost a century ago. The stand is packed with objects of all sorts, illustrating a capacity and a diversification of production worthy of the great multinational company that Pirelli had become in the early 1920s. There are the magnificent Pirelli Cord tyres that sped Tazio Nuvolari to victory on a Bianchi motorcycle at the Circuito del Tigullio that same year. There are great rolls of elastic thread and skeins of cables, a number of rubberised fabrics and an austere waterproof jacket. But what is really striking are the two rubber trees: they are real, and they come from the Pirelli plantations in Java. They are there to remind the visitor that that is where everything comes from – from latex, which has become the “white gold” of the West. Four seats in a sort of oriental style invite those interested to stop by at the stand.

Sixteen years may seem a lifetime, and indeed the Pirelli stand at the Fiera di Milano in 1940 had nothing in common with the Art Nouveau version of the 1920s. It is now minimalist and essential. Almost stark. Autarky demanded a search for alternative materials, and not just synthetic rubber in place of the natural variety, but also rayon, made from cellulose, to replace the cotton used for the construction of the tyre casing. “Extra-high strength Italian rayon”, both for the Stella Bianca car tyre and for the Sigillo Verde tyre for trucks: both bore the name “Raiflex”, which put its seal on “the new autarkic tyre”.

Then came the post-war period. And the desire to rebuild. A colour photo shows the outdoor Pirelli stand at the 1951 Fiera Campionaria. Visitors, in jacket and tie, look admiringly at the raincoats from Azienda Arona and at toys made by Azienda Sigma, at advertisements for thresher tyres painted by Bob Noorda, and at those for bungee cord luggage straps designed by Riccardo Manzi. Dominating everything was the new commercial logo, introduced in 1946, with the badge, star, and long stylised P. The economic boom arrived and it is no coincidence that the Pirelli pavilion at the 1961 Fiera di Milano was entirely devoted to holidays – a sign of happiness and well-being. Here we find rubber mattresses and dinghies made by Azienda Seregno, and Azienda Monza boats made with the latest plastics, which have strange names like “kelesite” and “resivite”. They float in the harbour, which for the fair becomes a real sea for real holidays. Because the story behind the product is important – it’s everything.

A book by a philosopher and a sociologist provides a new way to organise a business

Working together. With everything that a principle of this kind entails. What is only apparently easy is in reality extremely difficult to achieve. Entrepreneurs and managers  know this only too well, as they strive every day to put into such a principle into practice in their business. And yet, the horizon of production appears increasingly in these terms: creating shared work and production environments and mechanisms – this is the right path towards development. Especially in situations like the one we are currently experiencing.

“La Scienza delle Organizzazioni Positive.  Far fiorire le persone e ottenere risultati che superano le aspettative” (The Science of Positive Organisations. Making people thrive and getting results that exceed expectations) – a book written by four hands by Veruscka Gennari (philosopher with a remarkable experience in the area defined as “Applied emotional intelligence”) and Daniela Di Ciaccio (asociologist and consultant in the training and development of organisations) -, can help you understand more about this area of manufacturing organisation.

According to the two authors, the new business model needs to share a strong and collective purpose, supporting the emotional paradigm with the rational one, experimenting with coherence between culture and processes. These are necessary steps to give rise to organisations where “people flourish and get results that exceed expectations”. The book therefore integrates scientific information and managerial literature, also offering a practical outcome, thanks to the voices of experts and through various Italian success stories, which show that a new way of doing business, education, information and administration already exists in our country.

All this on the basis not only of the classical theory of manufacturing organisation, but especially of sciences such as chemistry, epigenetics, physics, biology, neurosciences. The entire text is underpinned by a basic principle: positivity and well-being “pay” because they activate the centres of learning, of creativity and of concentration, triggering a virtuous circle that translates into increased productivity and innovation.

An essential part of the book is the collection of a series of stories about businesses and entrepreneurs, such as Gianni Ferrario, Chimica Zero, “Rebranding Headquarters” (RBHQ), Money Surfers, Daniele Raspini, Zeta Service, Foxwin, Artademia.

The Book by Gennari and Ciaccio is an interesting read and above all it provides significant food for thought.

La Scienza delle Organizzazioni Positive. Far fiorire le persone e ottenere risultati che superano le aspettative (The Science of Positive Organisations. Making people thrive and getting results that exceed expectations9

Veruscka Gennari, Daniela Di Ciaccio

Franco Angeli, 2018

It will be called MIND. The mind, the pulsating brain of the new Milan in its role as the capital of science and knowledge. Or, translating the acronym, Milan Innovation District. This is the name chosen for the large area that was once the Expo, the Science Park which will host the Human Technopole, the scientific campus of the State University, a major hospital complex like the Galeazzi and the offices and laboratories of a long line of private companies active in the sectors of scientific, medical and pharmaceutical research, and of life sciences for which Milan in fact is at the vanguard of Europe. A large area – a million square metres. And one which is already attracting capital: 1.8Bn euros of private investment are already there, a first solid tranche of various international funds in anticipation of an increase in internationally significant growth.

It is a fine name, MIND. In tune with the functions and plans for a location and a city which is re-launching itself as a smart centre, a technological one but also one which is socially open and inclusive. Rem tene, verba sequentur or perhaps nomina sunt consequentia rerum, the Romans would have said, with that precision of terminology and of concepts which were characteristic of a language, Latin, of which, fortunately, people are once again coming to appreciate the quality and topicality: it is the substance of things, and the functions of activities which determine their name.

The present and future for Milan, in this era of the so-called “knowledge economy”, lies in its ability to combine scientific competence and humanistic learning into the original perspective of the “polytechnical culture”. So for this MIND someone will need to invent formats for images and communication, a representation of values and description. Taking charge of these tasks will be the Polytechnic University, the IULM University and the Brera Academy, to which Arexpo (the company which owns the area, headed by Giuseppe Bonomi), has already entrusted the job of defining its identity, issuing its Masterplan and building the strategies for its communication and publicity.

Milan, furthermore, has for a long time been a vital centre of the “polytechnical culture”. The roots for this can be traced back to the 15th Century work of a major architect, Bramante, an able mathematician and refined artist (there are relevant prints about him in Sant’Ambrogio basilica and especially in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie). And to the engineering works of Leonardo da Vinci, whose conceptual and constructional intelligence remains as keen and modern as ever, from the functioning of the Navigli canal network to the splendour of “The Last Supper”. And his “Atlantic Code”, carefully preserved in the Ambrosiana Library, remains a key destination for science students and tourists in search of the basic principles of beauty. The science and humanism of Leonardo are useful reference points, including for the neither ritual nor rhetorical preparation for the many initiatives to be launched in celebration of the five- hundred-year anniversary of his death, set in the calendar for 2019. And these could even serve as an inspiration for the activities relating to the definition of the identity and representation of MIND.

Reason and science were also a feature of the discussions in the Illuminist and Reformist “Il Caffè” journal of Verri and Beccaria. Science and modern economy ispired the pages of the “Il Politecnico” journal by Carlo Cattaneo in the mid-19th  Century. And that is precisely the title – “Il Politecnico” – that Elio Vittorini wanted to use for his magazine designed, just after the Liberation, to try to re-establish Italian culture, over and above the ideology of the crusades. And by placing the focus on what is essential for science and research – , freedom: “Intellectuals should not play the pipes for the revolution”.

Those were hectic years, the Fifties and Sixties in Milan, of which Vittorini was one of the key players. They were animated by painters and writers, publicists and entrepreneurs, graphic designers and architects. Not to mention design, a very Milanese dimension of creativity  which pervades industry and renders it more competitive: téchne, functionality and beauty go hand in hand; major companies (Pirelli, ENI) invest in sophisticated cultural magazines; one particular figure has a great success, Leonardo Sinisgalli, the engineer and poet, who works for Pirelli, Olivetti and Finmeccanica: factories, work, “the Machine Civilisation”. Refined culture and popular culture, if industry is popular. The Triennale exhibition still remains today a witness of its time and a driver of innovation, from pop art to town planning and to the best of design.

Culture, in Milan, is a laboratory. A word which evokes industry. The artist’s studio. And the research centre. A paradigm for reference could be Giulio Natta, Nobel prize-winner for chemistry in 1963, the peak year of the economic boom: he was a graduate of Milan’s Polytechnic University, and studied in the laboratories of Pirelli and Montecatini. Not to mention Nobel. With significant industrial repercussions: polypropylene, and the production of “moplen”, the moulded plastic which also changed purchases and the way people dress. The “Natta paradigm” is valid even today. In the transformation from manufacturing to digital companies, and towards a knowledge economy, the polytechnical synthesis works well. From factories and within factories, people are organising music and theatre shows, science is being portrayed on stage, industrial and designer products are being exhibited as if they were works of art. And it is precisely in an old factory that the HangarBicocca has developed – the largest centre for modern art in Europe. Culture, in Milan, is a fine industry.

And in the course of this journey too, we turn to MIND. A place for research, for innovation, for knowledge. For industry. And precisely through these industries, a place for the construction of extended wealth, of work opportunities and of a better quality of life. An opener with future possibilities of considerable interest. Not just for Milan. But for the whole system of the country. Milan, as a polytechnical capital moving forward, is actually a locomotive for economic and social growth which involves the entire greater region of the North integrated with Europe (from the Turin axis and from that of Bologna and the industrial part of Emilia) but which also serves as a strategic reference for the Mediterranean reaches of Europe itself, with an essential role for our Mezzogiorno region in the South. The banner: change and innovation. A fine undertaking.

This “springtime story” in March 2018 is devoted to them: all those women workers who, in a century and a half of the industry, have stepped through the gates of Pirelli factories every morning.

The first was Rosa. Rosa Navoni, born on 22 January 1858 in Lacchiarella. She was fifteen in August 1873, and the first woman to be hired by Pirelli. Medal no. 606, worker in the rubber section, workshop II, making playground balls. The name of Rosa Navoni appears in the registers of the first factory in Via Ponte Seveso, which tell us how Rosa went on to become operations manager and went to live in Via Galilei 11, practically opposite the factory. A photo of her was published in the book that celebrated the Group’s 50th anniversary in 1922. The 1902 Agreement between the company and its workers had established the salary scale and in 1904, for example, Rosa was earning 40 centesimi a day.

During the First World War, the female worker population doubled. Workshop 15 in Bicocca consisted almost exclusively of young women workers, dozens of whom were hired each day to cope with the constant increase in production and the simultaneous drop in the number of men in the factory. The “Worker Registry” at Bicocca for the years 1915-18, now in the Historical Archive, paints a broad picture, with more than 150 personal files of women workers at Bicocca during those war years. For many of them there is a photo, but taken at a later date. And many of them, after the defeat at Caporetto, had Friulian surnames and lived in the refuge home in Via Biglia, Niguarda.

Then came the e end of the Second World War, and Italy needed to be rebuilt. Streams of girls headed towards the factory, towards paid work outside of the home. Towards emancipation from fathers and mothers. The factory girls in 1947 are pretty and free in the archive photos, with their soft wave hairdos and beaming smiles. They work with tyre beads and laboratory control instruments, shaping tennis balls and latex gloves.

After the boom of the “work for everyone” of the 1950s, came the fiery opposition between capital and workforce, including women. These issues were dealt with at the heart of the factory, in the Fatti e Notizie house organ and by Pirelli magazine in the 1960s and ’70s.

Today, a hundred and sixty years since the birth of Rosa Navoni, many things have changed in the world of work and industry. The factories of the third millennium, like the Pirelli Industrial Centre in Settimo Torinese, are the perfect embodiment of “Industry 4.0”, with technologically advanced production processes, a focus on sustainability in terms of the safety and “beauty” of the workplace, and product innovation. Taking on today’s digital challenges and adopting new rhythms of production.

The results of Startup Survey 2016, the first census survey on new innovative production concerns in Italy have been published

New entrepreneurs full of good will. Who need to be encouraged, but who have to reckon with market and contextual conditions. In any case bearers of a corporate culture that contributes positively to the growth of the entire economic and social system of a country. We need to know a lot about this set-up. This is what “Startup Survey 2016” is for, the first survey on innovative Italian start-ups. The report produced by Istat has just been published, even though it concerns census research conducted in 2016 by the Ministry of Economic Development (Mise) and by the Italian National Institute of Statistics. Startup Survey was designed in terms of thematic contents as part of the Technical Committee for monitoring and assessment envisaged for by the national legislation on innovative startups – the Italian Startup Act published in 2012 – and its objective is to investigate the multiple socio-economic aspects typical of the phenomenon of new innovative Italian entrepreneurship. And that’s not all. The research in fact collected straight from the mouths of the entrepreneurs themselves various opinions and suggestions on various measures that make up the Italian Startup Act, with the aim of subsequently intervening on possible future rules. Among the topics addressed: the socio-economic characteristics of new entrepreneurs, their motivations and the propensity for interaction with the set of regulations.

More specifically, the report by Istat, after covering the actual definition of startup and innovative entrepreneur, investigates the possibilities and the sources of funding for this kind of company, and then moves on to a detailed examination of innovation strategies on the basis of which these companies were conceived and were created. The report ends with the examination of economic policy measures to promote startups and, last but not least, the report of the interviews conducted directly at the companies.

“Startup Survey 2016” has no ambition to be an interpretative essay of the phenomenon of innovative companies in Italy, but it still has great merit: that it describes with accuracy and clarity a multiform, varied reality, that is continuously changing and hence difficult to comprehend fully. It is therefore useful reading for everyone.

Startup Survey 2016

et.al.

Istat, 2018