A book by Riccardo Illy outlines how to do business

Patience and care for people, attention to detail and perseverance. In such rapid and fluid (if not manic) times, such as those we are experiencing, these are the features that increasingly distinguish good enterprises from all others. It is not the case that companies should no longer care for costs and profits, but rather that they should conceive them in a different, wider and more wholesome light. These are the ideals especially featured by many of the Italian companies that Riccardo Illy (industrialist with an eye on the world) describes, together with his own way of doing business, in L’arte dei prodotti eccellenti. Incantare i clienti con l’esperienza di un marchio di qualità aumentata (The art of excellent producs. How to captivate customers through the experience of augmented brands).

Quality is indeed the foundation of Illy’s argument, a trait shared by many Italian enterprises – according to Illy, while nowadays several business go for high profits in record times, losing the sense of patience and care in the process, Italian brands stand out for their ability to manufacture high-quality products able to withstand both competition and wear and tear.

The reasons for this can be found in the particular way Italian people have of doing business, which Illy describes (also looking at his own company) as determined to uphold quality and excellence of products rather than compromising with market demands. An approach that also integrates traditional techniques, as well as considerate of product and brand history, yet also able to adopt innovations when they prove to be successful. And, further, a commitment “to do good business” – business “good” not only to producers and consumers, but also to supply chains in their entirety, communities and the planet.

Illy illustrates his point by referencing other family-owned companies – such as Riva 1912, Domori, Pintaudi, Mastrojanni, Bisazza, Zegna, Agrimontana, Damman Frères and many others – and earnestly explaining the meaning ‘of doing good business’ in today’s complex and contradictory world. Readers are led along a path including 11 stages, each one featuring a concept that could beneficially impact enterprises. In his conclusions, the author writes, “It’s a matter of owning our times, of making fewer but better things. It’s a matter of creating a sense of family for employees and customers. And it’s a matter of endowing all that we produce with the Italian concept of beauty.”

L’arte dei prodotti eccellenti. Incantare i clienti con l’esperienza di un marchio di qualità aumentata (The art of excellent producs. How to captivate customers through the experience of augmented brands)

Riccardo Illy

La nave di Teseo, 2022

The history of Pirelli in Germany is one of travels, market analyses and investments. Pirelli’s headquarters in Germany is now in Breuberg, in the south of Hesse, in a factory that was taken over by the company in 1963 after its acquisition of Veith, a company that had been making tyres for bicycles and vehicles since 1903. But the history of Pirelli in Germany goes back much further, to the late nineteenth century, and our Historical Archive contains masses of information about what the company and its people have achieved over the years. A journey in many successive stages that, on closer inspection, goes back to even before Giovanni Battista Pirelli decided to set up the company in 1872. It was indeed he who also visited the German Länder in 1870 while on his “educational trip abroad”.

Further travels and studies continued in the years that followed. This can be seen, for example, in the letter that Alberto Pirelli wrote to his brother Piero on 24 November 1915 with a detailed report on the supply of rubber and derivatives in Germany and Austria, as well as on the export bans on Pirelli products. The report offers a careful analysis not only of the commercial regulations, but also of the international competition that Pirelli had to face on the German market. A few years later, in April 1921, after the end of the First World War, Pirelli sent Luigi Emanueli to Germany. Emanueli was one of the company’s engineers who made history, inventing the oil-filled cable in 1917 and the famous Cinturato™ tyre in the 1950s. He came back from his trip with a great stash of information: reports on dozens and dozens of companies he had visited and spoken with, quotations for raw materials, patents, drawings and technical surveys, and detailed notes on numerous companies in the same or similar sectors. This invaluable information formed the basis for further studies of market and technical factors that were carried out over the following years.

Our Archive also contains information about the advances Pirelli has made in Germany year after year, ever since production started in Breuberg. These include the progress the company has made in terms of both production and sales. Fatti e Notizie, the company house organ, gave ample space to news from Germany: 1988, for example, was the year when a new truck tyre plant went into operation, and in 2005 the magazine hailed the production record achieved by the factory with the title “Pirelli Wunderbar!”. The Breuberg plant celebrated its first 50 years in 2013. This was an important occasion, for the Long P factory was involved on both the car and motorcycle fronts, with a special role being played by the Metzeler brand, a historic German company taken over by Pirelli in 1986 and specialised in the manufacture of tyres for the two-wheel market.

Pirelli also made its presence in Germany known through advertising. In its collection, the Archive has many advertisements for the Cinturato, which also in Germany focused on “the safety of motorists”. This can be seen in the communication campaign of 1968, created by the graphic artist Pino Tovaglia, which includes the German flag. And the concept of safety returned to Germany in the 1980s with the Die Beine Ihres Autos campaign, in which a series of short films were released over a number of years, with several subjects (as well as a printed version), where the protagonists travel while balanced on a tyre, as though they really were “on the legs of their cars”.

Over the years, the Breuberg plant has turned into a high-tech factory devoted to the production of high-end tyres, with a close eye on production efficiency and on its environmental implications. Over the decades, the tyres manufactured in Breuberg have been mounted on the cars of such manufacturers as Audi, BMW, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Mercedes, Porsche, Volkswagen and Volvo, as well as on BMW, Ducati and Honda motorcycles. “Pirelli Wunderbar!” has never rung so true.

A book on marketing summarises an original way to look at markets and strategies to enter them

Markets conceived as spaces in which different communities meet (and clash). Markets as environments in which enterprises must learn to act with shrewdness, trying to conquer, one at a time, the communities that inhabit them already – communities that, when look at more closely, are surprisingly similar (though not excessively so) to tribes trying to carve out some space for themselves.

These are the premises of Mindset tribale. Strategie di marketing per conquistare il mercato, una tribù alla volta (Tribal mindset. Marketing strategies to conquer the market, one tribe at a time), the latest and recently published literary effort by Matteo Rinaldi, a marketing book that, at times, feels like a long and adventurous tale about corporate management, market strategies and social sciences.

Rinaldi begins from a key consideration: people have always – and even more so today – felt the need to congregate into a community or other types of social groups. Hence, the process entails emotions, too, not just rationality, something that is after all at the basis of all cultures (corporate culture included). And further, according to Rinaldi, something that must be taken into consideration by the enterprises and brands they represent.

Providing a comprehensive analysis of a large number of Italian “market tribes”, this work lends itself as a practical instruction manual, subdivided into simple steps for companies and startups. Each chapter ends with a “from theory to practice” section that include case studies (such as Esselunga and Red Bull), and include valuable accounts from the managers of companies like Danone, DUDE, Alce Nero, EssilorLuxottica, Nespresso. The book unravels along a path that first describes the actual “Italian tribes”, explains how to create new ones and then how to find already existing ones, and continues by exploring the links between the situation it describes and relevant marketing tools, before providing a number of case studies that are essential to thoroughly understand the process. Rife with diagrams and graphics, the work ends with some key indications actually stemming from a single notion: the need to shift from the abstract concept of “consumers” to the most tangible one of “people”.

Matteo Rinaldi’s book makes for a very enjoyable, and above all essential, read.

Mindset tribale. Strategie di marketing per conquistare il mercato, una tribù alla volta (Tribal mindset. Marketing strategies to conquer the market, one tribe at a time)

Matteo Rinaldi

Franco Angeli, 2023

The theme of digital innovation and its relations with economy and society discussed in clear and concise fashion

Digitalisation. This seems to be – and in many ways, actually is – the key concept around which development and growth revolve. The concept of digitalisation may appear clear even when is not so and, above all, must always be related to the circumstances in which we find ourselves operating, and take into consideration the changes to be introduced on a case-by-case basis. These are the complex topics discussed by Çağrı Emin Şahin and Metin Hasde in their contribution recently published in the Handbook of Research on Perspectives on Society and Technology Addiction.

The article is entitled “Digital Society: Basic Framework and Concepts” and offers an excellent overview of the relationships between digital innovation and the innovations required by the economic and social spheres to which the former applies to.

The authors begin with an observation: “With the development of information technology, societies have become a part of both national and international progress by exploiting opportunities using the tools offered by technology”. They then proceed to analyse the concepts underlying the new “digital society” that is taking shape and, above all, the relationships connecting them and the more general framework that is progressively emerging. The two authors take particular care to explain how the “‘digital society’ consists of institutions, groups, and individuals organized cybernetically around a certain interest relationship” and that these elements “realize their relations, interactions, connections, and communications with technology via the internet. The structure of the digital society reflects the nature of digital technology as people, technology, business, culture; and social interactions evolve and emerge”.

However, Çağrı Emin Şahin and Metin Hasde‘s conclusions do not stop at merely describing this state of affairs, but also point us towards a development path. As they explain, “There is a need for new frameworks that can transform the complexity of the reshaped world into manageable ideas and shape our perspective”.

“Digital Society: Basic Framework and Concepts” makes for a good guide to follow and find our way within such a complex and constantly evolving theme.

“Digital Society: Basic Framework and Concepts”

Çağrı Emin Şahin, Metin Hasde, in Handbook of Research on Perspectives on Society and Technology Addiction, 2023

Science, technology, mechanical gears, hydraulics and architectural calculations, details of birds’ flight to build machines that could imitate them, as well as beautiful drawings, accurate numbers, and fascinating illustrations embodying extremely refined artistry – the 1,119 sheets making up Leonardo da Vinci’s Atlantic Codex, preserved in the rooms of the Ambrosian Library in Milan, comprise all this. Moreover, this great volume (in the same format as a geographic atlas) embodies the quintessence of cultural traits that marked one of the best eras in Italian, as well as international, culture: the Renaissance. A blend between science and artistic creativity, amidst knowledge, craftsmanship and shared skills – a journey into learning and its narration. Astonishing “polytechnic culture” reviving in modern times that Greek wisdom based on kalos kai agathos (the ‘beautiful and good’) – beauty not purely conceived in aesthetic terms but, above all, able to “generate harmony” (to adopt the words Pope Frances used to address the artistic community at the Vatican). A machine civilisation with an artistic streak, humanism opening its doors to entrepreneurship and industriousness.

The exhibition featuring twelve drawings from da Vinci’s Atlantic Codex opened on Tuesday 20 June at the Martin Luther King Memorial Library in Washington (a building whose architecture is exemplary, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to create a public space open and accessible to everyone) and boasts long queues of visitors every day, including a lot of children, who can entertain themselves at dedicated tables and installations with games based on Leonardo’s works. And its title, “Imagining the future”, aptly expresses the value of an exhibition – the first in the United States – that moves along the perpetually interweaving paths of historical knowledge and engineering creativity, between traditional skills and the willingness to explore their new dimensions (as previously discussed in a blog post from two weeks ago).

An event entailing the “future of memory”, in other words, in full awareness of the wise message handed down by one of the greatest historians of the 20th century, Fernand Braudel: “To have been is a condition for being”.

The exhibition was organised by territorial entrepreneurial institution Confindustria, with Carlo Bonomi at its head, with the support of prominent Italian enterprises (Intesa Sanpaolo, ITA Airways, 24Ore Cultura, Dolce&Gabbana, Dompè, Pirelli and Trenitalia) so as to expose the great American public to a powerful illustration of the high quality of Italian manufacturing in a market that’s now become extremely demanding and competitive. Indeed, it focuses on key features of the Italian economic landscape: the very tight bond between doing business and creating culture, the role of “industrial humanism” acting as a productive – and therefore competitive – asset, the importance of insisting on particular “values” (beauty, quality, care for people, corporate ethics and therefore environmental and social sustainability) even while generating financial “value”.

The “machines” depicted in Leonardo’s twelve drawings exhibited in Washington (diggers, hydraulic structures, flight devices such as prototypes foreshadowing our helicopters or airplane wings) wholly express a blend of creativity and experimentation, a newly envisioned balance and sophisticated engineering techniques.

Knowledge in action – just as it happens with the best “made in Italy” goods and their unique “creative empathy” (quoting Franco Ferrarotti), which in many cases brings together market and society, productivity and social inclusion.

In Washington, the conversations had by business people, diplomats, politicians and cultural figures while admiring Leonardo’s oeuvres also bear witness to the importance of further exploring a topic that, lately, has come to prominence both in the United States and in Europe, a topic that concerns the relationships between science and the humanities and the necessity to reiterate the multidisciplinary structural nature of knowledge, as well as the need for progressively more expert skills able to “vertically” cut through various disciplines. Moreover, and above all, the need to reassert the relationships existing between different cultural spheres, giving science more room to expand, in equal measure with the humanities, however, so as to attain an increasingly more enhanced “polytechnic culture” – Leonardo da Vinci is undoubtedly a great example of this.

Indeed, a certain degree of apprehension has arisen – from the United States, in fact – a certain nervousness articulated, amongst others, by Nathan Heller, technology scholar and writer for The New Yorker: “University numbers in the humanities have dropped everywhere. It’s a mistake we’ll come to regret.” (La Stampa, 25 June).

Universities insist upon scientific subjects as they receive increasingly higher funding for them, also from the corporate world. Young people go to university looking for a “useful” technological education leading to well-paid jobs: “Faculties of humanities are at risk of losing the best students. This is a real and dangerous phenomenon”, states Heller.

Then again, developments in the digital world and artificial intelligence demand complex skills that won’t merely stop at “how to do things” but, above all, require to know “why we do things”, taking into consideration the ethical and social aspects of scientific evolution as well as the policies, political and cultural decisions we should take when faced with new technological frontiers, in order to understand, determine, and realise their consequences without giving in to a myth of “progress” seen as indisputably good and beneficial to all. That is, without the risk of “an eclipse of what is human by what is not”, in Heller’s words, and without neglecting the human dimension, our “inner life”, keeping an eye on the real world and not just on the economy.

In Italy, such considerations are also part of an ongoing discussion on the need to further emphasise STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) degrees, which enterprises are suffering a shortage of. A key debate on which knowledge and skills are useful for economic development yet, most probably, also one that requires some deeper consideration as regard to the humanities.

About ten years ago, entrepreneurial association Assolombarda, then headed by Gianfelice Rocca, was already insisting on adding the letter “A” for “arts” – the humanities – to the acronym, shifting from STEM to STEAM so as to include literature, philosophy, aesthetic and visual arts and radically improve culture and education.

This is still an ongoing debate (as the Polytechnics of Milan and Turin, which offer excellent philosophy programmes, are well aware of), precisely with respect to the new frontiers of artificial intelligence and the concerns of those who believe that algorithms shouldn’t just be written by engineers and mathematicians but also in collaboration with cyberscientists, neuropsychologists, philosophers, economists, sociologists, jurists and people of letters – in order to have said algorithms recognising multiple meanings, different shades of sense, ethical and social themes, policies and implications rights and duties. Human hands handling artificial intelligence. Being aware, in a very human way, of boundaries (recent stories, from the financial crisis to the pandemic and the war, have reminded us of this, forcing us to face our own fragilities).

Thus, reflecting on Leonardo da Vinci’s focus on the centrality of human beings in both the arts and sciences can inspire, even today, some very relevant thoughts.

The monographic exhibition Imagining the Future – Leonardo da Vinci: In the Mind of an Italian Genius, organized by Confindustria with Pirelli as the main partner, will open tomorrow at the DC Public Library in Washington.

There are plenty of links between Pirelli and Leonardo da Vinci: one came in 1920, when Leonardo took the spotlight in an advertising campaign for the Long P: a portrait of him showed “The best eraser for drawing”, as the slogan for the erasers that the company had been producing since 1875. Da Vinci’s influence is also clear to see in the frescoes in the Bicocca degli Arcimboldi, the fifteenth-century villa that is now an institutional venue for the Group, giving its name to the district where the Pirelli headquarters is located. The “Hall of Knots” has a decorative motif that derives from the Mudejar, a typical element of the last phase of Arab Andalusia, which Leonardo da Vinci often used in his works, including in the famous Codex Atlanticus.

And it is the Codex Atlanticus that is at the center of the exhibition curated for Confindustria by the director of the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Monsignor Rocca, which will be on show to the public in the library dedicated to Martin Luther King until August 20, 2023. The exhibition will bring the Codex to the U.S. capital for the first time with a selection of 12 original drawings from the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, Italy. The complete collection, dating from 1478 to 1519, contains sketches and preparatory drawings for his paintings, and research into mathematics, geometry, astronomy and optics, as well as philosophical meditations, fairy tales, gastronomic recipes, and military and civil architecture, but also designs for machines for use in war and civilian life, and devices for flight, created by one of the greatest geniuses of all time, universally recognized as a symbol of talent and of Italian know-how.

The project unfolds in 3 stages, in both Italy and the United States: A press conference was held at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, on 7 June with the launch of the multimedia communication plan. The exhibition in Washington DC will open on June 20 and run until August 20. Events will be held in Italy from September to December 2023 to present the exhibition and to examine the content and themes of the project. The aim is to help make known the value of an entrepreneurial spirit and corporate culture throughout the world, as the driving force behind economic, social and civil growth in each country. A multi-disciplinary culture that has always been a feature of Pirelli, and that echoes through the work and genius of Leonardo.

Exploring the shelves of the Pirelli Scientific and Technical Library takes one back in time to texts that were written in the late nineteenth century, and in the early twentieth, and then to the all the years that followed, up to the early 2000s. The monographs and periodicals that have been collected here illustrate the company’s technological development, and they show how Pirelli engineers expanded their knowledge of rubber, tyres and electric cables by studying these tomes. Over time, it was these engineers who put their names to research papers, texts, conference proceedings and annotations, which over the years became the foundations on which later generations would build their expertise.

Many of these texts were written by Emanuele Jona, an engineer from the Politecnico University of Turin, who specialised at the Montefiore Institute in Liège. Jona remained with Pirelli for 33 years, helping the company become one of the most advanced in Europe in the field of electrotechnics, and particularly in the submarine cables sector. This was thanks in part to the cable-laying ship Città di Milano, on which Jona personally embarked to supervise its operations. Among the texts in the Library there are important treatises on the subject, and reports on his maritime missions, including a note on “Oceanic Telephony” of 1896, the opening speech at the congress on the “Development of electrotechnics in Italy over the past decade”, which was held in 1906. Then there is a book dated 1913 on “Submarine cables from Italy to Libya” and another on “Italy’s submarine routes” of 1919.

Looking further through the volumes, another historical figure of the company immediately catches the eye: the engineer Luigi Emanueli, the son of one of Jona’s assistants, who followed in his father’s footsteps, graduating in industrial electrotechnical engineering and joining Pirelli in 1907, where he worked for many years in developing the cable sector. It was Emanueli who came up with one of the most important inventions in the sector: the “Cavo Emanueli” was a cable insulated by paper impregnated with fluid oil, which eliminated the dissipation of energy at source. Among his most important writings, which are now preserved in our Scientific and Technical Library, we find various technical reports and proceedings of international conferences, such as a volume on “Experimental research on dielectric losses” of 1913 and one entitled “Occluded gas in very high-voltage cables: some experimental results obtained in the Pirelli laboratories in Italy” of 1926. A text of great interest is “Luigi Emanueli and the development of high voltage cables”, written by Paolo Gazzana Priaroggia, one of his closest assistants, who examines this important figure and the role he played in the field of electrical engineering, These and countless other volumes are still consulted today by engineers and researchers who want to broaden their knowledge of tyres, rubber, physics, chemistry and electric cables. A wealth of knowledge that is handed down from generation to generation, through the centuries.

A research study on corporate law and organisation outlines a different approach to innovation

Innovation – a key concept for enterprises aiming to grow. A set course, then, that is also rife with difficulties, issues that in many cases have led enterprises to the verge of failure. It is a matter of carefully made choices and a corporate culture that must deal with increasingly complex contexts both internal and external to an organisation. There are rules to follow, both in legal and organisational terms. This is why reading “Crisi d’impresa e innovazione tecnologica” (“Corporate crises and technological innovation”) is worth the effort, a contribution by Serenella Sabina Luchena recently published on the University of Bari’s law and economy journal.

The study especially attempts to correlate the different degrees of technological innovations with corporate theory and practices. Luchena’s reasoning unravels from an underlying observation. “The relationship existing between technological innovation and corporate activities,” she explains, “is acquiring increasing relevance today. In this respect, it is possible to identify two different interaction profiles: one entailing technological innovation as part of production operations, where it becomes the goal of corporate activities; the other where it integrates within the corporate organisational structure, affecting governance decisional processes”. The author attempts to identify the degree of relationship standing between innovation and the chance of a corporate crisis, as well as the nature of mechanisms that could prevent the latter.

The outcome is that corporate organisations must be prepared for “the arrival” of technological innovation, and they need to carefully reassess their own structure and budgeting strategies, also in accordance with the principles of corporate crises. An organisational and cultural feat that Serenella Sabina Luchena’s contribution helps us understand in all its minutiae.

Crisi d’impresa e innovazione tecnologica (“Corporate crises and technological innovation”)

Serenella Sabina Luchena

I battelli del Reno. Rivista on-Line di diritto ed economia dell’impresa, University of Bari, 2023

The latest book by Salvatore Rossi offers a distinct snapshot of Italy

Good enterprises are built through knowledge, and this also creates awareness of the context in which they operate and relates to what went on before them, which are the bases to properly face the future. However, we need reliable tools for this, and in little less than 200 clearly written vivid pages Breve racconto dell’Italia nel mondo attraverso i fatti dell’economia (A brief history of Italy around the world through economic facts), the latest literary effort by Salvatore Rossi – economist, CEO of the Bank of Italy and now president of Telecom – paints a picture of Italy as a country unique to this world, rife with issues yet also brimming with resources.

Italy’s geographical identity and distinct civilisation – the cumulative result of equally unique features – are described using a good narrative style and a comprehensible yet never trite or inaccurate language.

The author tried to answer a question: “What is the place of Italy in today’s world?” The answer could be found in the state of the economy that, indeed, takes up a lot of societal energy and allows to reconstruct the nature of its own society. Indeed, Salvatore Rossi narrates the Italian economy by juxtaposing it to the great global powers, and he does so integrating data as well as historical and political thoughts, through a number of stages focused on: enterprises, globalisation, conflicts, international economic relationships – all narrated through a lively language conducive to reflection.

The whole is bound together by a fil rouge linking present and past, especially that past era when an economy blending aesthetics and function, art and innovation, elegance and technology, arose. This is precisely Rossi’s aim: to rediscover that fil rouge that may be the key to retrieve a leadership position in a world that, nowadays, seems to need exactly what Italy knows how to do best.

Salvatore Rossi wonders whether: another Italian renaissance is possible, and, indeed, finds that the answer is yes.

Breve racconto dell’Italia nel mondo attraverso i fatti dell’economia (A brief history of Italy around the world through economic facts)

Salvatore Rossi

Il Mulino, 2023

In a book recently published by Laterza, Piero Bevilacqua, professor of Contemporary history at the University of Rome, talks of “Italian bliss”, referring to “landscapes, arts, music, food”, i.e. those unique features that distinguish Italian society and consequently also its economy and ability for cultural and civic growth. Agriculture and biodiversity, then, as well as nutrition (as witnessed by the international success of the “Mediterranean diet”), widespread beauty in cities and towns, creativity (the pages that Bevilacqua dedicates to Neapolitan song are fascinating), and a civic tradition based on cooperation that has left its beneficial mark on growth and development models.

A well-documented, positive portrait that doesn’t ignore issues, difficulties and contradictions, however, and yet conveys a spirit of cooperation, a commitment to reforms and keen awareness about changes that can improve the quality of life of both individuals and society.

Therefore, cooperation as a value, without neglecting a continued emphasis – that always permeates non-fictional pieces able to tell an “Italian story” at its best – on the attitude entailed in the etymology of the term “compete”, which derives from the Latin cum and petere: that is, the attitude of pursuing together the fulfilment of an aspiration or a shared project.

Indeed, Bevilacqua’s work inspires such approaches, that are furthermore part of the conclusions drawn at the International Meeting on Human Fraternity, recently held in Rome (on 10 June) and promoted by the Fratelli Tutti Foundation. The aim of the event was to reflect on Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato si’ (Praise be) as well as on the quality and environmental and social sustainability of development (and included the participation of 30 Nobel Prize winners and Italian leading figures from the economic, cultural and “third-sector” spheres). As stated by Ermete Realacci, president of Symbola Foundation and coordinator of the Italian working committee, “Fraternity proves to be the foundation of a circular and collaborative economy on a human scale, aimed at healing the wounds inflicted by inequality and injustice during a most frenzied and greedy globalisation era”.

In fact, Europe and Italy, thanks to a prevalent shared culture able to combine competitiveness and solidarity, individual entrepreneurship and welfare systems, productivity and social inclusion, play a key role in this and have the ultimate responsibility of bringing about an increasingly necessary “paradigm shift.”

Themes that also resound throughout the annual “Cohesiveness and competitiveness” Report, promoted by the Symbola Foundation, Unioncamere and Intesa Sanpaolo, which will be discussed at Symbola’s summer conference scheduled for this weekend in Mantua, and whose focus will be on “the strength of territories throughout the green transition”.

What does the Report tell us, with regards to the economy? “Cohesive enterprises help deepening bonds in communities and territories, increase employees’ sense of belonging and life satisfaction (in 2020, welfare payments due to trade union negotiations rose by 19.5%), foster engagement and dialogue with customers, strengthen supply chain and district relationships (according to Intesa Sanpaolo, district-based enterprises have experienced an increase in productivity in recent years, more so than non-district-based enterprises), thus generating a beneficial impact on competitiveness”.

“Cohesive” enterprises are those enterprises that “extend their research beyond company boundaries, collaborating with universities, artists and designers in order to accelerate innovation or discover new material and product applications. Enterprises that, together with the third sector, have strengthened their own communities, promoting the territories in which they operate and engaging civic society in social or environmental projects. Corporate stories where the ability of enterprises to deepen the dialogue with customers, also by listening to them, has led to collaborative production that intercepts community trends and needs, which then become consciously representative and illustrative of those enterprises’ values”. In addition, these are “Enterprises that see banks as ideal partners in the reorganisation and consolidation of their supply chain, thus enhancing their own performance, that of their suppliers and that of the credit institutions themselves. Enterprises that have increased their value by involving their workers in their business goal, or that have created for them a better environment where professional development and work-life balance harmoniously coexist, nurturing and acquiring more talent thanks to the care and attention they pay to their staff”.

Basically, enterprises that “build alliances with institutions in order to boost local services and become increasingly attractive to professionally qualified staff, or to ease their integration within the territory, co-investing together in community-focused projects. Enterprises that have become more competitive through collaboration with other enterprises, whether suppliers or even competitors, in order to generate quality, sustainable and more resilient lifestyles and ecosystems, or to exchange raw materials and know-how, thus increasing their profits through working together”.

Cohesive enterprises have grown as compared to previous years: the rate in 2022 was 43%, higher than the rate in 2020 (37% – though it certainly was an “anomalous” year, heavily impacted by the pandemic outbreak) and the rate in 2018 (32%). The increase in cohesiveness, continues to say the Report, is visible not only in the rate of concerned enterprises, but also in the number of average corporate relationships, which are also on the rise: essentially, cohesive enterprises grow even when raising the bar of average relations.

The benefits that cohesive enterprises gain are rather obvious – dimensional growth (in 2023, 55.3% of enterprises expect a higher turnover than in 2022, as compared to 42.3% of other companies), employment (an improvement of 34.1% in 2023 as opposed to 24.8% of other companies), and export (42.7% as compared to 32.5%), and these are clear trends that seem confirmed for 2024, too.

The Symbola report corroborates cohesive enterprises’ propensity for “green” operations, and almost two out of three have invested or will invest in environmental sustainability (62.1% as compared to 33.2% for other companies), and 16.9% of them ( 8.8% of other companies) have integrated sustainability as an item in their reports (sustainability and social reports, ESG ratings, and so on).

In terms of the digital transition, too, 46.9% of cohesive enterprises have implemented or are implementing digital technologies over the 2022-2024 period (24.4% of other companies), and, still over the same period, in three cases out of four have introduced or are introducing innovations (less than half the number for other companies).

Cohesive enterprises “believe, more than the others, in our country: if we consider backshoring activities, as measured through the growth of the rate in local Italian or extra-regional suppliers, over the next three years they’ll involve 26.4% of cohesive enterprises as compared to 19.5% of other companies, and their selection of suppliers providing high quality products is also greater than other companies (83.8% as compared to 76.9%)”.

With its figures and stories, asserts Realacci, “this Report confirms, just as the “Manifesto di Assisi” does, that ‘in Italy, all that may be wrong can be righted through all that is proper’ and that cohesiveness is essential to build an economy and a society on a human scale, leading to a better future.

(Photo Getty images)