Based on the experience of an archaeologist and a management expert, a book that discusses culture and its expressions

Museum junk. If this was the model, or rather, the image that we had of museums and their contents until some time ago, today – fortunately – this same image has changed considerably. This is thanks to a cultural evolution that, by re-evaluating knowledge of the past as a tool we can use to live better in the present and think about the future with foresight, has also influenced museums (and archives) to make them into vehicles of knowledge available to all. Christian Greco and Paola Dubini (he is an Egyptologist and director of the Egyptian Museum in Turin, she is a professor of management at Bocconi University in Milan) reflect on these themes in a compelling book just under 150 pages long that reads like a journey through the fascinating museology of today.

The assumption on which the two authors base their reflections may seem obvious at first glance. Today, managing a museum no longer means simply showcasing a collection of objects, but rather leveraging our cultural heritage to convey messages that go beyond the museum halls. In other words, the museum has become a place of research and a bridge between the past and the future. Many cultural institutions and even numerous businesses now know very well that it is around museums (and their archives) that they have built truly cultural initiatives, not just communication strategies.  Starting from the idea of the museum as a methodological archetype, the dialogue between Greco and Dubini leads to the political significance of using culture as a way to enhance the territory, generate opportunities for encounters between different cultures, promote collaborations between the public and private sectors, harness the power of art to activate new forms of diplomacy, and encourage the exchange between different disciplines to foster growth and attract talent.

These concepts are developed and explored in depth in a work enhanced by the experience of an enlightened museum director and a diligent expert in the management of numerous cultural institutions. The result is the emergence of a living instrument at the service of all, a tool that must be supported and cared for, valued and defended. The museum can have different forms or purposes but always retains its essence, that of being a unique tool for understanding the personal and professional journeys of individuals and the organisations they build. “La cultura è di tutti” is a must-read.

La cultura è di tutti

Christian Greco, Paola Dubini

Egea, 2024

The icon is the phrase attributed to Prince Myshkin, the protagonist of “The Idiot” by Fëdor Dostoevsky: “Beauty will save the world”. It was not a consolatory motto, but rather an invitation to seek, in the shadows of the miseries and pain of daily existence, those traces of grace and morality that allow us to raise our gaze towards a better condition of thought and life. The idea was taken up again, in more recent times, by Tzvetan Todorov in a book of the same title, linking the thoughts of Oscar Wilde, Rainer Maria Rilke and Marina Cvetaeva to those of the Russian writer.
Beauty, therefore, as the search for balance, quality, measure, as well as an aesthetic value (in full knowledge that already at the time of the Greek philosophers, aesthetics and ethics were common areas of reflection). Beauty as a way of escape from suffering.
These are the first thoughts that come to mind about the recent Humanitas project “La cura e la bellezza” (Care and Beauty), created with the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan for the San Pio X clinic. The walls of the health facility bear reproductions of the “Dama” by Pietro del Pollaiolo, with her elegant and composed gaze and the famous pearl necklace, followed by works by Hayez, Botticelli, Canaletto, Grechetto, Sassoferrato, Previtali, Sofonisba Anguissola, and other artists, all there to mark the times of the wait, to offer a moment of serenity in conditions of suffering, to provide a moment of rest for doctors and nurses, patients and their families, and for those who, for one reason or another, pass through the rooms of care, laboratories, clinics, and hospital wards. But also to accompany moments of happiness (at San Pio X there is a busy maternity ward: the new lives of baby girls and boys begin here).
“We are a home that provides care. And that wonderful house-museum, the Poldi Pezzoli, helps us evolve and become a true home for patients and staff,” says Gianfelice Rocca, president of Humanitas.
Paintings. And art objects from the Poldi Pezzoli collection, clocks, timepieces, porcelain (the project was curated by Daniele Lupo). With the underlying idea of highlighting gazes, landscapes, flashes of eyes and intertwined hands, light, and colours, to give substance and depth to life as it flows—life that surely deserves the chance for a moment of respite, a pause, a breath amidst suffering. To be specific, therapeutic beauty.
The initiative with Poldi Pezzoli is the third stage of a journey embarked upon years ago by Humanitas. With the Brera Museum for the IRCCS of Rozzano and then with Accademia Carrara for Humanitas Gavazzeni of Bergamo (a film on this initiative, directed by Nicola Martini for Social Content Factory, has just come first at the Made Film Festival of Bergamo for corporate cinema, along with “Includere per crescere” by Bnl/Bnp Paribas).
The choices that concern the relationship between beauty and health are important ones. And they certainly cannot be applied generally to all healthcare facilities, in a sector already burdened with difficulties, shortages, tensions, economic and functional limitations. But they are interesting choices worth considering nonetheless. Because the quality of the healthcare environment affects the mood and psychological climate of patients and family members, doctors and nurses and therefore improves the psychological inclination to give space to the hope of recovery (to give just one example, the paediatric wards of the Niguarda Hospital, in Milan, were furnished and decorated a few years ago, with cheerful and colourful drawings, by Pirelli; and several other companies have moved in similar directions in other hospital facilities).
Moreover, even in the business world, there is a growing awareness of the importance of a positive relationship between companies and stakeholders, the people in the communities affected by the company’s activities. A virtuous circle between “doing, doing well and doing good”. A relationship of social and civil values that goes beyond the strict role of the company as an actor that produces economic value.
Corporate culture, in fact, must be understood as a culture of sustainability and social responsibility. And the Life Sciences are experienced not merely as a sector of healthcare but as a broader domain related to health and quality of life. A dimension, moreover, in which the world of Italian businesses can share exemplary stories.
Care and beauty, then. As a personal and social choice. Reflecting on visual arts, following the Humanitas paradigm. But also on theatre and music. On poetry and literature (“Curarsi con i libri” was the title of an extraordinary volume by Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin, published about ten years ago by Sellerio: “Rimedi letterari per ogni malanno”). On all aspects of the Italian “polytechnic culture” that continues to combine humanistic and scientific knowledge, beauty and technology, memory and innovation. With an idea of “integral humanism” that embraces the person in their complex wholeness and the social body with its bonds of solidarity and inclusion, along with the ability to value diversity. A healthy choice. But also a far-sighted idea of civilisation. A robust social capital.

Featuring the successful inventions and innovations in Italian patents, the exhibition L’Italia dei Brevetti: invenzioni e innovazioni di successo, opened on 18 November at the Palazzo Piacentini in Rome. Organised by the Ministry for Business and Made in Italy, the event celebrates the 140th anniversary of the Italian Patent and Trademark Office and marks the 550th anniversary of the first Patent Statute, promulgated by the Republic of Venice in 1494.

The opening ceremony was attended by Minister Adolfo Urso and Deputy Minister Valentino Valentini, together with the curators of the exhibition and representatives from over one hundred participating companies, institutions, and research centres.

Open to the public from 23 November 2024 to 2 March 2025, the exhibition showcases the transformative power of ideas on society in Italy and around the world, presenting over 100 industrial patents. The stories of these patents are arranged in seven thematic sections, based on the type and purpose of these innovative devices, highlighting how new technologies have improved production processes across various sectors of industry. The exhibition features original materials drawn from patent archives and modern patent management systems, alongside photographic and multimedia content, as well as physical products and prototypes.

Pirelli is represented by its Run Forward™ technology, for controlling the rolling resistance of moving tyres and for reducing vehicle energy consumption. This breakthrough method, which was patented by Pirelli Tyre SpA in 2021, is applied to the P Zero™ E tyre, which is on display in the exhibition along with pictures and samples of materials like lignin, silica derived from rice husk ash, bio-resins, natural rubber, and bio-based circular polymers. The P Zero™ E tyre is composed of over 55% materials of natural or recycled origin. These include natural rubber, textile reinforcements, bio-resins, lignin, and other natural chemicals, and recycled materials in the form of metal reinforcements, chemicals and—through a mass balance approach—synthetic rubber, silica and carbon black.

This is thus a story not just of technological progress but also of sustainability and know-how. All Made in Italy.

As part of the 23rd Business Culture Week, promoted by Confindustria and Museimpresa, the Pirelli Foundation and Muse Factory of Projects present Il cinema racconta l’impresa, on how business appears on the big screen.

On Wednesday, 27 November, at 6:30 p.m., the Sala Astra at the Anteo Spazio Cinema will screen a series of audio-visual works that run along a timeline with genres ranging from the Carosello TV commercials to documentaries, short films, and animations. The selection tells the story of Pirelli and its product and corporate culture.

The programme features La ruota, a Pirelli commercial for the cinema directed by Toni Pagot in 1956, and produced by Pagot Film. Upon its release, this film captivated Walt Disney himself, who requested a copy for his production company. The animated short  Donald and the Wheel (1961), directed by Hamilton Luske for Walt Disney Productions and distributed by Buena Vista, does indeed appear to take inspiration from Pagot’s film.

The evening will continue with the Olympic misadventures of the cave dwellers Mammut, Babbut, and Figliut, stars of the popular series of Carosello TV commercials directed by the brothers Roberto and Gino Gavioli and produced by Gamma Film for Pirelli. A familiar sight on Italian televisions between 1962 and 1965, viewers enjoyed two minutes of chaos until the reminder “we’re no longer in the Stone Age!” was heard, and viewers were given a quick invitation to embrace the modern world of rubber.

Drawing inspiration from La Fontaine’s famous fable, The Tortoise and the Hare presents a snapshot of 1960s Italy, balancing tradition with modernity. This award-winning film triumphed at the 1966 International Industrial Film Festival and at the 1968 Moscow Industrial Fair. Directed in 1966 by Hugh Hudson, who would later make Chariots of Fire, the film was produced by Cammell Hudson and Brownjohn Associates for Pirelli Ltd in the UK. Now also preserved in the MoMA archives, the film’s credits were designed by Robert Brownjohn, the celebrated designer known for creating the iconic title sequences for Goldfinger and From Russia with Love.

In the mid-1980s, Pirelli commissioned the then-twenty-seven-year-old Silvio Soldini to create La fabbrica sospesa. This documentary, with Luca Bigazzi as director of photography, tells the story of the transformation of Milan’s Bicocca industrial area through a series of personal accounts from those who experienced it. Rather than merely describing the redevelopment of the spaces, the film seeks to capture how these changes resonated with those who had lived—and still lived—in the district.

The programme ends with NOI SIAMO, a Pirelli Foundation project produced by Muse Factory of Projects and curated by Francesca Molteni. Written and directed in 2023 by Mattia Colombo and Davide Fois, this seven-minute short film uses the artistic language of the cinema to illustrate the corporate culture of Pirelli, which it portrays as “a stage for the arts and technology”. A story in pictures, it is inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s The Life  of Galileo, which runs through various aspects of corporate culture: theatre, music, art, research, and innovation, highlighting the combination of artistic and scientific creativity that has always defined Pirelli’s corporate identity.

The screenings will be introduced and discussed by Antonio Calabrò, the director and producer Francesca Molteni, the director and producer Maurizio Nichetti, and the director Silvio Soldini. Admission is free, with booking required by Monday, 25 November, until all seats are taken, using the online registration form.

A newly published book tells us how to be a leader in the time of complexity

How to effectively develop the powers of persuasion and management for the good of the company and the people who work there. This is the goal of all (or almost all) managers. And, if you think about it, it is also the goal of anyone who is tasked with “managing” an organisation and so, also the social system or a state. Yet often it is easy to find politicians who are incapable of providing convincing answers to the economic and social challenges that affect the population; as well as self-centred and narcissistic managers who are more interested in achieving their own goals than in the growth of an organisation.

Reading “Essere leader in un mondo complesso”, written by Alessandro Cravera and recently published, helps to understand the difficulties of being a leader and, above all, the tools that should make it easier to be a “good leader” of any organisation.

Cravera attempts to answer two sets of questions. Is it a “difficult” world that puts spokes in our wheels? Or are our ideas inadequate for a scenario that is (more than) rapidly changing? In other words, is it everything around the leader that creates difficulties, or is the leader the problem?

The book is a journey – in just under 200 pages – that helps us understand the difficulties of leadership and, then, the most correct path to take in order to overcome them. A path whose stages we understand from the very first pages, in which the author talks about the need to favour sharing over protection, and experimentation and mistakes over planning and programming.

The narrative therefore begins with an in-depth look at what “being a leader” really means, then moves on to the origins of the idea of leadership and then to the “terrain on which to build a new leadership”. A terrain featuring some fixed points that indicate the right equipment to use and, above all, the notion that “there is no leadership without wisdom,” meaning that it requires a culture of attention and listening, which is intrinsically linked to good business practices and the ethical conduct of society.

Essere leader in un mondo complesso

Alessandro Cravera

Egea, 2024

A study by Inapp highlights what is lacking to enhance how we use remote working

Some call it remote working others call it working from home. In any case, we are talking about a new way of working (especially for office jobs) that is completely different from the usual ones. Remote work already existed before Covid, exploding during the pandemic and, above all, continuing after the emergency. But today we are still trying to understand its effects through studies and surveys. In addition to a way of working, in fact, remote working entails a different culture of production that is becoming increasingly widespread and that must be well understood.

This is why we would benefit from reading ““Iper-luoghi e spazi di interazione: lo smart working nelle aree interne”, a recently published Inapp study by Filippo Tantillo and Rosita Zucaro.

The paper is presented as ‘the first organic outcome of a research activity aimed at measuring and analysing the significant synergies and impacts that remote work can have on territories in the process of abandonment and at high risk of depopulation, the so-called Inner Areas.’ This is an important point. Remote work, in fact, can be the key to open doors that have almost always been closed, especially those that connect disadvantaged areas with the rest of the economy.

To gain a better understanding of the situation, Inapp has therefore launched the study starting from the dizzying spread of remote work for emergency needs, with the aim of measuring the impact that these new working methods can determine in terms of the geography of the work in a territory burdened by an accentuated polarisation, between congested areas and those undergoing severe depopulation.

The study is divided into several phases. First of all, the links between remote working and inner areas were explored, then the indicators available were analysed to better understand the situation, and the experiences of three inner areas were studied in detail. The study concludes by indicating a series of national and regional measures that could promote the spread of this type of work.

Remote work, as conveyed by the researchers, is not only a concrete way of understanding the culture of production but also serves as a tool to curb the exodus of the population from areas where it is ‘complex’ to live. At the same time, however, the study highlights the ‘discrepancy between needs and demands (…) and the responses of the regulatory framework’.

Iper-luoghi e spazi di interazione: lo smart working nelle aree interne

Filippo Tantillo, Rosita Zucaro (edited by)

INAPP Papers, 2024

We are the second biggest industrial country in Europe, immediately after Germany. But Italians don’t know this. In some sectors of excellence (mechatronics and robotics, fine chemistry, high-speciality pharmaceuticals, automotive components, luxury yacht construction, etc.), we hold positions of international prominence. However, public opinion largely believes that tourism is the prime driving force that ensures the wealth of our territories. We are among the five largest exporting countries in the world, thanks to our industry, particularly the mechanical sector. However, citizens are looking to the future with confidence in hotels and commercial opportunities, especially in shopping. “Cognitive dissonance” is the name of this phenomenon, in which an opinion clashes with the reality of facts and data. In other words, Italy does not know who it is and how its wealth is produced and therefore does not have a solid idea of where to go.

These are the thoughts that come to mind when reading the data from the latest “Monitor on Work” (Mol Community Research & Analysis) for Federmeccanica, which Daniele Marini reports on in Il Sole24Ore (15 November) commenting: “Industry slips to the margins of the collective imagination, it occupies a peripheral role in the social representation of development”.

This “cognitive dissonance” is therefore a real problem. Because the EU (and therefore also Italy) is in the midst of a season of transition and radical transformations, caught between the heavy political and economic competition between the USA of Trump’s “MAGA” era and an expanding China (while the shadow of India can also be glimpsed, looming, growing on the horizon). And in order to hold off the competition and safeguard its precious political-social model (which brings together, in an original way, liberal democracy, a market economy built on individual enterprise and welfare systems, with widespread well-being) a new and ambitious shift in economic policy is needed, and specifically in industrial policy.

Here’s the deal: Europe can continue to remain anchored to its values and its civil culture if it maintains an industrial force with a global weight and scope. That is, if it addresses the environmental and digital transition by focusing on the green industry, in which it already boasts high-level production achievements. And if it therefore invests in new technologies (infrastructures, research, education and training processes) and in the well-structured and guided use of Artificial Intelligence, with those 800 or even 1,000 billion a year for the next decade according to the indications of the Draghi Report.

In short we must insist on industry, also in the name of our democracy. We must aim to have “more Europe and a better Europe”, despite everything. And avoid the risk indicated a few weeks ago by the “Financial Times”: losing the competitive challenge with the USA and China and ending up being “the Grand Hotel of the world’s rich and powerful”. A place of historic elegance. But devoid of weight and power. Incapable of deciding on its own future.

Talking about industry is therefore essential. As is working hard to overturn, in a short time, the opinions of those Italians who, according to Federmeccanica’s “Monitor on Work”, think that Germany is the country with the greatest industrial influence on the economy, followed by France and the UK (Italy is only fourth, with 12.4% of the opinions in the survey) and believe (in 27.7% of cases) that the sector that has contributed most to the development of the territory so far is tourism, followed by industry (17.4%), trade (15.4%), agriculture (14.9%) and then gradually craftsmanship, construction, banks and public administration. And for the future? Tourism rises to 30.5% and trade to 16% while industry falls to third place, with 15.7% of opinions.

This phenomenon of underestimating our industrial weight has very deep roots. It originates from a widespread anti-business culture, hostile to the market, factories, but also to technology and science (to have documented awareness of this it is worth reading “La modernità malintesa – Una controstoria dell’industria italiana” by Giuseppe Lupo, published by Marsilio). From a lack of cultural awareness about the phenomena of industrial labour, seen especially during the 1960s and 1970s, primarily from the perspective of labour and social conflict, rather than from that of positive modernisation. From a reluctance of the business world itself to open up and tell its story (‘we are people of action, not of words,’ was a distorting refrain favoured by many industrialists). But also by a public opinion that favoured anti-industrial clichés and was marked by an evident information deficit. And from a tendency, deeply-rooted in economic and academic circles, to insist on the decline of industry at the end of the twentieth century, to give way to the “advanced tertiary sector” and finance.

Data and facts, especially after the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, have disproven these false constructs of a distorted imaginary and have instead restored importance to the real economy. And Italy has grown, more and better than other European areas, in the post-Covid years, precisely thanks to its “industrial pride”, investing, innovating, insisting on the green economy and on environmental and social sustainability, not as a clever communication choice but as a real “paradigm shift” in production, making it an asset of competitiveness and quality in the markets.

Here it is, then, the reality of Italy’s high-tech and sophisticated quality industry (the exhibition on ‘The Italy of patents – successful inventions and innovation’, which was inaugurated yesterday in Rome at Palazzo Piacentini, the headquarters of the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy, is proof of this).

The shift needed to overcome the ‘cognitive dissonance’ we have discussed and to assign Italy a leading role in the EU’s industrial future also involves complementing ‘knowing how to do’ with ‘making known’ and telling, especially the new generations, about the importance of industrial work, high-tech factories supported by technological services, and science and research laboratories.

This is confirmed by the theme chosen for the Business Culture Week, from 14 to 28 November, organized by Confindustria and Museimpresa, to talk about “Artificial Intelligence, art and culture for the relaunch of the company”. A very clear theme: “Thinking hands”. Hands, that is, the central element in manufacturing, in the company that knows how to make “beautiful things that the world likes”, to repeat the striking short description offered by Carlo Maria Cipolla. And alongside the wisdom inspired by craftsmanship that nourishes even the most sophisticated new factory, there is ‘thought,’ meaning knowledge, research, and the original experimentation of new and better productive, economic, and social paradigms. Essential in times of such radical technological changes, disruptive digital transitions, and environmental shifts. Full of risks and opportunities for positive change.

Now in its 23rd edition, Business Culture Week entails over a hundred initiatives throughout Italy, mostly in museums and the historical archives of companies (debates, meetings, guided tours by students and teachers, exhibitions, literature and video festivals, such as the Made Film Festival in Bergamo on business cinema, which ended on Saturday, etc.). And it aims, with increasing commitment each year, to make the enterprise ‘popular,’ positive, and creative, countering the hostile or otherwise sceptical sentiments towards business that we have mentioned.

So the doors of our factories are flung open. And they interact with the public. The Business Culture Weeks tell how much industries are, indeed, productive actors but also social and cultural ones. Physical and mental places where the past and the future meet, memory serves as the cornerstone of innovation, and competitiveness is tied to social inclusion. And economic value is achieved and maintained precisely thanks to the focus on the moral and social values, rights and legitimate interests of stakeholders. A culture rooted in the history of every company that perceives the essential role it plays. And a commitment to choices on sustainability, quality of work and people’s well-being. With a growing focus on combatting all types of discrimination, from those based on gender, violence, and alterations of the civil values of a community.

Of course, all of this is not enough to quickly resolve the ‘cognitive dissonance’ from which our reasoning began. There is a need for political choices regarding the primacy of industrial policy and productive capabilities. For cultural commitments (making corporate culture the cornerstone of knowledge of the importance of material cultures: a suggestion for the new minister Giuli). For educational activities on the importance of work. And for challenges for those in culture and communication to go beyond the stereotype of the Fordist factory as “ugly, dirty and bad”.

Essential challenges. Also to prevent a lack of knowledge about Italy’s industrial sector from fuelling those failures to focus and false perceptions of reality that would contribute to the risks of economic, and thus social and civil, decline of our country.

The nature and role of benefit companies seen as new production organizations

From profit to other, broader and more complex objectives. This is the trajectory of many businesses and, upon closer inspection, of a large part of the industrial and economic system in many productive areas. It is along this trajectory that benefit corporations are positioned, examples of a production culture that takes an original stance in relation to the classic economic models, yet does not overlook “good accounting” as an essential element to always include among business objectives.

Le società benefit: un fenomeno nuovo dalle origini antiche un’analisi empirica nel contesto italiano”, a contribution by Arcangelo Marrone recently published in the series of studies and research of the LUM University, can be a good read to better understand the characteristics of these forms of enterprise. In particular, the author works within the study of organisational models that, in the broader process of convergence between for-profit entities and the non-profit sector, have emerged in recent decades, both in Italy and internationally; models that have given rise to the so-called “hybrid enterprises”. And it is among these that we find benefit companies: having been introduced into the Italian legal system in 2016 in the wake of the American Benefit Corporations, they now play an important role in Italy too.  Companies that truly give substance to a particular business culture model capable – Marrone points out – of combining the production of economic profit with one or more common benefit purposes, thus combining traditional economic objectives with the generation, in the medium-long term, of shared value with the stakeholders, towards whom these companies must operate in a responsible, sustainable and transparent manner.

Arcangelo Marrone’s study therefore describes these new productive organisations, placing them within the current economic and social context and providing them with a perspective for development.

Le società benefit: un fenomeno nuovo dalle origini antiche un’analisi empirica nel contesto italiano

Arcangelo Marrone

LUM University, 2024

A recently published book traces the history of AI and explains its limits as well as its powers

Artificial Intelligence and much more. Also in the past. Understanding what is happening today must—necessarily—pass through an understanding of what has happened before. Because the visionaries of today closely resemble those of yesteryear. Being aware of what has already happened, in other words, is to understand better and for real what is happening now. Barbara Gallavotti has written a book – ‘Il futuro è già qui’ – which is very helpful for navigating these paths.

The book takes its cue from an observation: not a day goes by without the press or television talking about the latest and most amazing advances made due to Artificial Intelligence. AI seems to be robbing us of what we (citizens and businesses) had always done ourselves. The industrial revolution brought about by AI leads, for example, to machines that perform highly complex calculations in seconds, or allows us to benefit from rapid decision-making processes even for complex problems. But the question we need to ask is: what happens when we see this technology as becoming too pervasive and when it appears to take over capabilities that we always thought were exclusively ‘ours’?

To really understand what is happening, Gallavotti traces the history of the visionaries who, over the centuries, have dreamed of creating machines as intelligent as human beings and laid the foundations of today’s AI. But above all, she highlights the profound differences between the way our brains work and how the tools we have invented function. This seems to be the crux of the matter: only by grasping these differences can we explain why Artificial Intelligence outperforms us so easily at certain tasks while others seem destined to remain out of its reach for a long time to come, if not forever. Hence a consideration that Gallavotti explains clearly: the choice about the role new technology plays in our lives is ours alone, as individuals and as a community. Not the other way around. Only in this way could AI herald a new era, that of Natural Intelligence: the era in which we will be able to benefit from what we have invented more than ever before.

Barbara Gallavotti’s book is not the first, nor will it be the last to address the topic of progress and AI in particular, but it is undoubtedly worth reading and re-reading.

Il futuro è già qui

Barbara Gallavotti

Mondadori, 2024

Any trip to Italy is a ritual, of education and knowledge, where one re-reads history and imagines the future. The proof lies in the pages of the Grand Tour by Goethe, Houël, Tocqueville, and Dumas, as well as in the more recent writings of Alberto Arbasino in the many editions of “Fratelli d’Italia”. But also in the exemplary journalistic investigations of the 1950s and 1960s signed by Mario Soldati for RAI, Guido Piovene for ‘Corriere della Sera’ and Giorgio Bocca for ‘Il Giorno’. Or in that unique collective adventure of twenty photographers coordinated by Luigi Ghirri, who set out in 1984—exactly forty years ago—to capture the landscape of a country in transition (“We journeyed with Ghirri through everyday Italy to recognise as liveable those inhabited places that were neglected and ignored,” recalls one of the participants, Vittore Fossati, in La Repubblica, 10 November).

The portrait that emerges, with all the natural differences in terms of the authors’ culture and style, is that of a country full of contrasts and controversial aspects, with a landscape characterised by breathtaking beauty but also marked by lacerating devastation. And with a particular ability to hold together culture and enterprise, local selfishness and solidarity, widespread prosperity and intolerable poverty, both economic and spiritual.

A robust social capital nonetheless. The moving portrait of an extraordinary humanity.

The cliché of Italy as an ‘open-air museum’ does not do justice to this special geographical, cultural and economic condition. And the great archaeologist and art historian Andrea Carandini is right when he criticises that definition (Corriere della Sera, 7 November) and explains that the country is rather ‘an enormous open-air context, one of the most beautiful in the world’. The context of different interventions, parts of a story to be told. In its many aspects. ‘Our cities,’ insists Carandini, addressing Culture Minister Giuli, ‘are living contexts. Each one deserves a museum of its own to tell its story. We start with Rome and Naples’.

Here’s the deal. For some time now, we have been considering the economic value of culture, the links between cultural heritage and tourist appeal, and the special characteristics that bind territories to businesses. And now is the perfect time—after this summer’s debates on overtourism, the transformations of major art cities, and the anxious anticipation of 35 million pilgrims in Rome for the Jubilee—to reflect on the characteristics of the Italian landscape, so heavily shaped by the humans who inhabit it yet so rich and varied. It is also an opportunity to consider the values of business culture as a form of sustainable culture, both environmentally and socially, and as a driver of balanced development.

A culture that is worth a considerable share of our GDP but also and above all has a positive impact on the values of the Bes, the ‘fair and sustainable well-being’ indicator developed by ISTAT to quantify the value of the quality of life (on which knowledge, education, health, and positive social relations weigh).

The ‘I am Culture’ Report put together by Symbola, Unioncamere, Centro Studi Tagliacarne and Deloitte calculates that the cultural and creative production system will have an added value of 104.3 billion euro in 2023 (up 5.5% on the previous year) and employ 1.5 million people. With a multiplier of 1.8 in different economic sectors, such as transport and tourism, another 192.6 billion is generated. The total, between direct cultural wealth and indirect wealth, comes to 296.9 billion. 15.8% of the Italian GDP.

According to Banca Ifis, in its recent study on the Economy of Beauty, art and culture are strategic assets for competitiveness. There are 732 companies in the sector and they generate 192 billion in annual revenues.

However one calculates the value of the cultural and artistic industry (which, according to Symbola, also includes the gaming industry), its impact on national wealth is significant. And the relationship with the appeal of the country system as a whole is highly respectable.

But let’s go back and focus specifically on tourism. ‘In the last ten years, the holiday motivation linked to the enjoyment of cultural heritage rose from seventh to first place, appealing above all to the international tourist demand, which is 55%, and to the more upwardly mobile,’ says Loretta Credaro, president of Isnart, the National Institute for Tourism Research (Il Messaggero, 7 November). A tourism that is attentive to the local areas that host it, to experiences, including cultural ones, linked to art, but also to cuisine, wine, design, fashion and other made-in-Italy products. And sensitive to the human and social aspects of the quality of hospitality.

In this context, the idea of industrial tourism moves forward as part of the broader chapter of cultural tourism, leveraging company museums and corporate historical archives, gathered under Museimpresa (with 150 members, including large, medium, and small enterprises, as well as institutional supporters, such as the historical archives of the Cavalieri del Lavoro). Business history. Not only, and not so much, as pride in a past of ingenuity, commitment, work, and creativity. But above all, as a competitive asset, a lever of identity to establish oneself in highly selective international markets, and as a stimulus for innovation.

In times of change and great transitions, in fact, working on the memory of our past and on the valorisation of Italy’s enormous cultural and industrial heritage is a way of testifying that we are part of an active citizenship that allows us to think about the quality of development and its inclusiveness. Italian savoir-faire is a distinctive feature, an ethical value of work on which it is worth focusing.

Our company museums and business archives, in fact, contain the history of women and men who, in the face of the challenges of changing times and even in conditions of great difficulty, provided a productive and commercial response that is still relevant today, as demonstrated by the data showing a strong and robust export performance. These testimonies can also serve as an element of attraction and inspiration for young people, helping them understand how our companies are the ideal environments to realise their projects, assert their initiative, and unleash their creativity.

If tourism stimulates knowledge, industrial tourism in the made-in-Italy territories can also play an important role for companies perennially in search of quality people.

Data from a survey conducted by Nomisma for Museimpresa documents that almost 6 million Italians (5.8 million, to be exact) have visited a business museum, a company history archive or a place of industrial archaeology in the last four years. They were motivated by a desire to better understand what lies behind the iconic objects of the finest Italian products, to learn about the history of the companies and the related art and design, to become familiar with the relationships between industries and territories. They were young (most are between 30 and 44 years old), highly educated, and came mainly from the northern regions. And they deemed the experience ‘educational and formative’. Among the 34 million Italians who, in the last four years, have taken a trip or at least a short excursion, 17% have already visited a company museum, and an additional 21% would gladly go. An interesting opportunity to develop ‘industrial tourism’, therefore. And a more stimulating perspective than ever before for those who want to learn about the economic history, the revitalisation of the business culture, and foster a more widespread and responsible understanding of the role of our manufacturing companies and services in improving the economic development of our country.

The most popular museums? The Ferrari Museum in Maranello, followed by the Crespi d’Adda Village in the province of Bergamo, the Alfa Romeo Historical Museum in Arese, the Lavazza Museum in Turin and the Olivetti Historical Archive in Ivrea. There is plenty of potential to expand and promote other opportunities throughout Italy.

The industrial landscape and the cultural landscape are, in short, parts of the same environment. And with environmental and social care and respect, they can act as an ever stronger driver of development. Of widespread wealth. Of good economy.

(photo: Getty Images)