Giuseppe Berta writes a book about the figure at the heart of every company

Who is an entrepreneur really? This is a crucial question in order to understand the nature of a company, i.e. the creature that comes to life thanks to the entrepreneur’s work. A body and an organisation, a set of machines and of lives, a company is plied to resemble the entrepreneur, and immediately thereafter the managers which he or she surrounds himself/herself with. It is a question of culture as well as technique. Today still, just as in the past.

The question about the nature of the entrepreneur is therefore an important and fascinating one. Some answers to this question were sought and found by Giuseppe Berta, who teaches Contemporary History at Bocconi University in Milan but who also boasts a lengthy collaboration with the Italian business system. In his “L’enigma dell’imprenditore (e il destino dell’impresa)” (The enigma of the entrepreneur and the fate of the enterprise), Berta tackles the issue first from a strictly historical point of view and then from a modern-day perspective. The story therefore begins  from the middle of the 18th Century, when the entrepreneur is represented as the engine of the economic process. So, pure classic economics, the evolution of which is followed with a plain and understandable – but not for this matter superficial – language. From the classic image of the entrepreneur, the author then moves on to the identification of more specific figures and to the identification of the entrepreneur with his capacity to innovate. Right up to the advent of the US  managerial  approach. Entrepreneur and manager went hand in hand for some time, explains Berta, and then changed again. With the spread of information and communication technologies, the issue of entrepreneurship went back to playing a key role. New figures of entrepreneurs – like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk -, configure according Berta a “capitalism of platforms” that is under discussion today and that opens the way towards a new image of the entrepreneur himself/herself.

Berta recounts and analyses, placing the emphasis on one aspect rather than on another. It is a smooth read, which accompanies the reader along a short trip in terms of the number of pages, but one that is intense in terms of contents. A book about history and economics, the last literary production by Giuseppe Berta should be read carefully as it also opens up future reasoning. Indeed, right in the last few lines of the story, one reads: “For the moment, the fortunes of entrepreneurship depend on a world that is shaped, concurrently, by technologies, by the mobile boundaries of the international economy and by the excessive expansion of availability and of the financial circuits. A mixture that can apparently endlessly feed opportunities and the number of new entrepreneurs. But until when?”.

L’enigma dell’imprenditore (e il destino dell’impresa) (The enigma of the entrepreneur (and the fate of the enterprise)

Giuseppe Berta

Il Mulino, 2018

As the Cannes International Film Festival comes to a close, the “Stories from the World of Pirelli” section has often looked at the many times in which the cinema has encountered the Pirelli Group. From the actresses on the covers of Vado e Torno magazine to the creation of advertising cartoons, through to film reviews by Morando Morandini for Pirelli magazine.

And, of course, Pirelli and cinema could hardly fail to join forces in the world of films devoted to motor-racing. Countless actors have been motor-racing enthusiasts and there will be countless more in the future: foremost among them was Paul Newman, who fell in love with racing while on the set of Winning, which came out in 1969, and was always behind the wheel after that in endurance races, from Daytona to Le Mans. And then there was Steve McQueen, another veteran of endurance races, as Patrick Dempsey and Adrien Brody have been more recently. To say nothing of Jean-Louis Trintignant, a rally driver in a Ford Mustang in A Man and a Woman of 1966, and himself the nephew of the driver Louis as well as of Maurice, who won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in ’54 in a Ferrari 375 fitted with Pirelli tyres. But there was only one racing driver who was called upon time and again to play himself in front of the camera – the Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio. It was 1950: in the set photos now in the Pirelli Historical Archive, the film is referred to with its provisional title Perdizione. It was actually released the following year as Ultimo incontro (Last Meeting). We are on the Monza racetrack, with the protagonists Amedeo Nazzari, Alida Valli and Jean-Pierre Aumont. It is a sombre tale of betrayal and blackmail in the world of motor sport, in which the driver Fangio plays the part of… the driver Fangio.

That year the Argentine was racing with the mighty Alfa Romeo team along with legends of speed such as Nino Farina, who went on to win the world title, Luigi Fagioli, Consalvo Sanesi, and Piero Taruffi. The Long P logo of Pirelli, which supplied the red Alfa Romeo cars with Stella Bianca tyres, is embroidered on their overalls, under the cloverleaf symbol. In Perdizione/Ultimo incontro, Fangio was already on his way to becoming a legend, but his serious, watchful look is that of a true actor. The driver from Balcarce stopped racing in the late 1950s, with five world championships under his belt. During his career, his name appeared a number of times next to that of Pirelli: it happened again in 1965, and once again there was a camera there to film it. This was for a spot produced by Gamma Film for the Carosello TV commercials programme and for a photographic reportage by Ugo Mulas. The driver again played himself, the legendary Juan Manuel Fangio, now clocking up the laps on the Monza circuit in his Alfa Giulia GT. When he gets out, he looks into the camera and recalls: “I used to race with the Stelvio, but now this Cinturato is really different from the rest. Extraordinario!” And, in his magnificent Italian-Argentine manner, Fangio goes on to tell his audience on the television screen about his endless string of successes.

From cinema to television, and then back to cinema: the only thing missing was a film about his life, naturally played by himself, a very active and lively seventy-year-old. Fangio: A Life at 300 An Hour came out in 1981 and was the long story of a career the likes of which may never be seen again. In the film, we see the motor racing super champion back behind the wheel of the Alfas, Maseratis, and Ferraris of his golden years, all the way back to the Chevrolet pick-up with which he started out as a driver in faraway Argentina. As though everything were coming back intact. And maybe it is more than just a coincidence that the director of A Life at 300 An Hour was the same Hugh Hudson who just a few years previously, in 1966, had directed a road movie for Pirelli, The Tortoise and the Hare, an ode to the Cinturato tyre that Fangio referred to as “extraordinario”.

A book that has just been published clarifies the essential terms of the debate between the opening and closing of borders, the risks to be addressed and the opportunities to grasp

 Businesses that are globalised and immersed in globalisation. It is a given fact. One which should however be understood well, using clear and secure guidelines. It is important not only for the production organisation, but especially for the vision with which entrepreneurs and managers  look beyond the windows of their offices. “Tutto un altro mondo. Globalizzazione e innovazione tecnologica: la strada europea” (A completely different world. Globalisation and technological innovation: the European road), written by Alessia Mosca and just recently published serves this purpose specifically.

The book constitutes a good “manual” to understand the essential traits of globalisation and of our attitude as Europeans, but also a heartfelt appeal not to lose what is good in this process, which goes against all the walls and protectionisms.

The literary work by Mosca – which is a little over 150 pages long – starts with a consideration: although it has brought great advances and despite the fact that it has forged a reality which, data in hand, is generally better than the past, even the recent past, globalisation is currently under heavy attack. The reason is simple: the evolution of globalisation has been very rapid and the effects have not all been positive, as there are inequalities. In other words, it is easier to close up than it is to open up to others.

The author then first describes the history of globalisation, followed by a comparison between the latter and protectionism, then moves on to address the European globalisation “model”.A story that is a journey towards the world: one that is useful for a corporate culture that truly wants to be so.

The author provides a slow and clear tale of this process, whose concept is really taken apart and made available to everyone. There are in fact no short-cuts on clarity and even hidden shadows are exposed. The pros and cons to solve are also illustrated on the basis of the author’s personal experience: the European perspective and the work in the international trade Commission of the European Parliament.The result is a book that makes for a good read. One that is perhaps useful to keep at hand, in order to dispel doubts and questions that may arise along the globalisation path of each and every one of us.
Tutto un altro mondo. Globalizzazione e innovazione tecnologica: la strada europea (A completely different world. Globalisation and technological innovation: the European road)

Alessia Mosca

Edizioni San Paolo, 2018

Research conducted by several people tells of the effectiveness of the bonds between territories, people and companies

Talking, getting to know one another, growing together. This also applies to companies and to economic territories if you want. It is a question of trust, built little by little. It is also a question of culture. One that also applies to production organisations and in general to economic activities.The crucial point is nevertheless always the same: to reach real integration between the territories and the people.

To understand better what this is about, you can read “Youth employment and regional integration in the Euro-Mediterranean region“, a work written by multiple authors and recently published in the Euro-Mediterranean Network for Economic Studies. The purpose of the research is to examine how regional integration is capable of providing solutions in both the short-term and the long-term to the employment crisis, in particular in the Euro-Mediterranean area.

First of all, it describes the situation of the policies on the subject of youth unemployment and integration. Secondly, it describes the impact, on the creation of jobs for young people, of regional integration in Mediterranean countries. Lastly, it investigates the qualitative scenarios that are most appropriate for the creation of jobs and provides some policy recommendations for promoting employment and employability of young people.The research therefore provides some general indications for the growth of the culture of integration and good business culture, one that is multiform and multi-ethnic, open, capable of creating inclusion. First of all, the authors explain, greater coordination among the initiatives of employability and then greater harmonisation between the rules and laws of the countries involved, but also an openness to knowledge and towards others that are still often lacking in the institutions as well as in the core of society and of production.

The work – written by a group of researchers from various universities that overlook the Mediterranean -, outlines a good picture of the situation and of the possible perspectives relating to the employment market in the Mediterranean area. It is a useful tool to broaden the “view” of companies on the topic.

Youth employment and regional integration in the Euro-Mediterranean region

et.al.

Euro-Mediterranean Network for Economic Studies, 2018

To celebrate this important anniversary, we are presenting Il Canto della Fabbrica, a book edited by the Pirelli Foundation and published by Mondadori, in bookshops from 29 May. The book reflects on how music too can be a starting point for narrating the present-day factory, and it does so through the voices of intellectuals, musicians, and industrialists. The title of the book is taken from “Il Canto della Fabbrica” a piece of music commissioned by the Pirelli Foundation from the composer Francesco Fiore for the violin of Maestro Salvatore Accardo, the world premiere of which was performed in the Pirelli Industrial Centre in Settimo Torinese during the MITO SettembreMusica Festival in 2017.

Just as the “four blasts from a factory siren” in Dmitri Shostakovich’s Second Symphony interpreted the factory of the early twentieth century – steel and noise, smoke, and the exhausting and fatigue of mass production – so Salvatore Accardo and the strings of the Orchestra da Camera Italiana convey the rhythms of digital manufacturing, with computers and robots in the 2000s, in “Il Canto della Fabbrica”. The 13 essays in the book have been penned by Marco Tronchetti Provera, President of the Pirelli Foundation, Antonio Calabrò, Director of the Pirelli Foundation, the architect Renzo Piano, the conductor of the Orchestra da Camera Italiana Salvatore Accardo, Maestro Francesco Fiore, and by the President of the International MITO SettembreMusica Festival Anna Gastel and Professors Piero Violante, Giuseppe Lupo, Domenico Siniscalco, Pier Luigi Sacco, Massimo Bergami, and Stefano Micelli. The volume contains over 120 illustrations from the Pirelli Historical Archive, showing the concert, the factory, and the way it has changed. A dedicated website, ilcantodellafabbrica.org, which can also be reached by QR code, has been set up to share and communicate the content of this project in the digital world.

The book will be presented on 4 June 2018 at 7 p.m. at the Pirelli Headquarters in Milan Bicocca, in the presence of Marco Tronchetti Provera, the Mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala, General Manager of Libri Mondadori Gian Arturo Ferrari, and Anna Gastel and Antonio Calabrò. At the end of the presentation, the Orchestra da Camera Italiana, conducted by Maestro Salvatore Accardo, will perform “Il Canto della fabbrica”.

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For the third year running, Pirelli and the Pirelli Foundation are giving their support to the Festival of Educational Robotics. Now in its twelfth edition, it will be held on 17 and 18 May at the University of Milano-Bicocca.

The project has been devised by the Amico Robot network of schools in Milan and its province. It is sponsored by the Department of Human Sciences for Education and illustrates the potential offered by the innovative teaching methodology of Educational Robotics, which uses little robots as tools for learning disciplinary and transversal skills. The Pirelli Foundation will be present at the Festival with a stand to introduce children, young people, teachers and visitors to Pirelli’s innovation and research.

The Festival will also be an opportunity to illustrate the educational courses organised by Pirelli Foundation Educational, which are inspired by new technologies and which have been created to introduce scientific and technological culture to promote road safety and sustainability, also among the youngest pupils.

On Friday 18 May at 1.30 p.m. in lecture hall U16-11, there will be a meeting on the subject of “Mechanical eyes and digital robots for safe, customised tyres: Discovering Pirelli’s innovative technologies”, organised by the Pirelli Foundation. It will be held by engineers from the Research and Development department, who will describe Pirelli’s design of cutting-edge robotic systems. The talk will concentrate on Automatic Visual Inspection (Controllo Visivo Automatico – CVA), the automatic system for inspecting tyres that won the 2016 Oscar Masi award for industrial innovation, and on the Modular Integrated Robotized System (Next MIRS) for manufacturing customisable tyres. The design and creation of robots large and small is the focus of the Festival, in which the students themselves will play the lead role.

The first day will be devoted to exhibits, with the presentation of one or more robots on the stands set up by kindergarten and primary-school children. The robots will interact with the settings created by the children as well as with the visitors, involving them in games and activities. The highlight of the second day will be robot competitions for lower-secondary schools, which will illustrate the students’ problem-solving and teamwork skills, demonstrating best practices in robotics at school. From “penalty-shooter robot” to “rescue team”, the automatons made by the kids will battle it out to win the final prize.

While visiting the 33rd Turin Motor Show in April 1951, the president of the Italian Republic, Luigi Einaudi, must certainly have stopped to admire the latest from the Italian automotive industry. He would have seen models like the Lancia Aurelia Gran Turismo, which was designed to give another new entry, the Alfa Romeo 1900 Touring Coupé, a tough time at the Mille Miglia. Then he would have gone to the Pirelli stand, where he would have seen the premiere of Novità al Salone Internazionale dell’Auto di Torino (“The Latest from the International Motor Show in Turin”), a delightful animated film in which a car wins a coveted “Gran Premio” by beating wonderfully original models like the MacPerson AntiCrash, the Alpestren Machine for climbing mountains, and the Frou Frou for scintillating soubrettes. And all this thanks to Pirelli Stelvio tyres – safe when braking and in the wet. The animated advertising film was specially made for Pirelli by the Pagot Film production company under the direction of its founder Nino Pagot. Working with his younger brother Toni, Nino Pagot grew up with the school of so-called “Italian Disneys”, who had been born before the war, and by 1951 he was already a successful cartoonist. The effervescent 1950s were now pushing towards the cinema cartoon as a prime means of expression and Pirelli was one of the first companies to believe in the work of the Pagot brothers: Novità al Salone dell’Auto was a prize-winner at the Second Congress of Advertising in Genoa and it won the Prime Minister’s Cup for the best advertising film at the Second International Film Festival.

Pagot’s four-minute cartoon also had the guidance of Leonardo Sinisgalli, who was editor of Pirelli magazine at the time, together with Arturo Tofanelli. And it was in issue number 3 of 1952, in June, in an article entitled “Considerations on Advertising Films” that the film critic Vittorio Bonicelli held up Novità al Salone as an example of “intelligent direct advertising, in which the theme of the product being advertised permeates the entire film with good taste and talent, in the form of a witty little lesson on road traffic.” The Pagot brothers later went over to television and to the early evening Carosello advertising programme launched by RAI in 1957 – making no small contribution to the history of Italian cartoons. For the programme, the Pagots found themselves up against another great creative couple of those years: the brothers Gino and Roberto Gavioli and their Gamma Film. Now came Pirelli’s most famous Carosello commercials: the cartoons with “Mammut, Babbut, Figliut”, a family of cave-dwellers who publicised both the prodigious Gommapiuma product and the Sempione and Cinturato tyres. The three cave-dwellers’ outlandish adventures were a regular feature on television for Italians between 1962 and 1965: two minutes of endless troubles – accompanied by pure Palaeolithic grunts – until at last a little man would arrive and invariably caution that “we’re aren’t in the Stone Age any more!”, while the advertisement at the end would invite viewers to enter the modern world of rubber. During the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, in particular, Papa Babbut showed off his skills in a disastrous but hilarious series of sports performances.

Also in 1962, however, the brilliant Pagot brothers produced another form of expression in advertising: the “diavive”, a series of slides mounted in sequence to form short animated films, with the spoken word, sound and colour. Diavive were made for cinema screens, lasted 26 seconds, and ended with the name of the tyre dealer who sponsored the screening. And above all, the drawings for the diavive bear the name of a master of advertising design, Riccardo Manzi.

A classic read that is well worth re-reading better to understand the multi-cultural foundation of production organisations

Understanding corporate culture is apparently easy and straightforward. In actual fact, defining with accuracy the concept and practice of the culture of production organisations is anything but a foregone conclusion. This is also because the concept of corporate culture is a concept that is practised, one that is difficult to categorise and one which changes depending on who is experiencing it as well as on the basis of the individual production facilities. The updated re-edition of “Cultura d’azienda e leadership” (Corporate culture and leadership) by Edgar H. Schein is therefore a good way to “revise” the constituting elements of corporate culture, as well as always being an interesting read for anyone wishing truly to start sorting things out in this field of corporate activities.

At the heart of Schien’s thoughts are, on the one hand, the interaction between subcultures and organisational counter-cultures and, on the other, the interaction of these with the organisational culture that contains them. But what exactly is organisational culture? According to Schein, this should be understood as a coherent set of fundamental assumptions that a certain management has created, developed and promoted to tackle the problems of external adaptation and internal integration. Schein also specifies that cultural and organisational change is one of the toughest challenges for management. Especially today, within rapidly changing and multi-ethnic production and working contexts.

The book then begins with the general definition of culture, and then immediately provides a series of examples to explain its application within companies and production organisations as well as regards the growth of learning. The pages of Schein’s book therefore cover the cases of Ciba-Geigy Company, Apple, Saab Combitech but also of Ibm and Hewlett and Packard.Particular attention is then placed on the management of multi-ethnic cultures within companies. As well as on possible solutions to the problems posed by working with macro-cultures with which companies developing at global level have to deal.

The Book by Edgar Schein packs into a little more than 300 pages a significant volume of information and ideas that should be absorbed attentively by entrepreneurs and managers  at multiple levels, yet which could be helpful to many companies in Italy.

Cultura d’azienda e leadership (Corporate culture and leadership)

Edgar H. Schein

Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2018

Vado e Torno, a periodical published for the world of road hauliers, first came out in 1962. It was originally the idea of Arrigo Castellani, the Pirelli press and advertising director. As well as topics specifically related to the sector, the magazine also contained articles on current events, society, and entertainment. And the front covers were devoted to the top cinema stars of the moment.

It was the twenty-four-year-old Claudia Cardinale who graced the cover in December 1962. She had just finished Girl with a Suitcase, which once again confirmed her as a star of Italian cinema, after Big Deal on Madonna Street, Il Bell’Antonio, and Rocco and His Brothers. For Vado e Torno, Cardinale dressed up as Angelica, the splendid protagonist of Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard. The cover of April 1963: Monica Vitti was by now the female icon of Michelangelo Antonioni’s movies. After The Adventure, La Notte, and L’Eclisse, the masterpiece Red Desert was just about to come onto cinema screens. In October of the same year, 1963, Stefania Sandrelli was just seventeen but the public had already seen the sensational charm with which the actress from Viareggio had played the part of Angela in Divorce Italian Style. The dress, the gathered-up hair, and the black makeup on her eyes on the cover of Vado and Torno take us instead to Agnese – the woman who is “seduced and abandoned” by the young Peppino Califano – whose part she played in the famous film by Pietro Germi. And then comes Sofia Loren, or rather “Sophia”, as we read on the cover of Vado and Torno of December 1966. Vittorio De Sica’s Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow was coming out just then. Three episodes, with three different Lorens, and three different Mastroiannis.

Hollywood landed on the front cover of the “road hauliers’ magazine” in April 1964, with the inimitable charms of Jane Fonda. The twenty-seven-year-old New Yorker, daughter of the great Henry, was maybe not quite yet a star of the silver screen, but she already knew the director Roger Vadim, whom she would marry the following year. When he turned her into Barbarella in 1968, Jane Fonda became an international celebrity. The front cover in May 1964 went to Brigitte Bardot, the “première dame de France”, but this was an accolade she would soon share with the star of Vado e Torno in July 1964. This was Catherine Deneuve, who just won the Cannes Grand Prix for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and a few years later, in 1967, she was to become the shameful Séverine in Buñuel’s Belle de Jour. In September 1965 and April 1966, Italian readers marvelled at Ursula Andress, who was already famous for her outfit in Dr No: the scene in which the splendid Swiss actress emerges from the Caribbean waters of Crab Key had already made history. The last star – ending the series of actresses on the front cover of Vado and Torno, in January 1972 – was Pamela Tiffin, from Oklahoma City, known – though not universally – in Italy for her part in Dino Risi’s Torture Me But Kill Me with Kisses with Nino Manfredi.

We end this anthology with an actress whose life is a mystery: her name is Liz Allsop and she appears on the July 1966 cover with a white dress bearing a map of the Autostrada del Sole, from Milan to Naples. She is the blonde at the wheel of the Jaguar in The Tortoise and the Hare, a road movie by the director of Chariots of Fire Hugh Hudson, produced by the British Pirelli to celebrate the Cinturato tyre. Another story, another little masterpiece.