In its 150-year history, Pirelli has achieved great things in corporate welfare, which was something the founder Giovanni Battista worked hard for, right from the outset, investing in forms of social security and assistance and launching projects that were well ahead of their time. Some of the most important include the institution of a welfare fund in 1877, which provided subsidies in the event of illness.

This was one of the earliest examples of a project in support of workers introduced by a large company. A healthcare service was then set up in 1926 for the benefit of employees and their families, providing specialist advice, laboratory tests, home care and considerable facilitations for admission to hospital and nursing homes. As the company grew, ever greater assistance was provided to the workers, covering not only healthcare issues, leisure activities and sport, but also those of the family, such as education for the children.

Still today, Pirelli promotes and supports the well-being of its people and fosters a strong sense of belonging, making all its employees feel they are part of an open and inclusive community.

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Talking about factories means talking about processes and products, technological innovation, countries and people. Pirelli’s first plant for processing rubber opened in Milan in 1873. Just a few years later, it started expanding abroad, opening branches and production plants and it soon became a multinational corporation that was known and admired around the world. It now has 18 factories operating in 12 countries. In the 1950s, the factory acquired a new look, always abreast of the fast-changing times, as it was seen through the eyes of artists and painters, and a few years ago it was viewed in music too, when its rhythms, beats and sounds became “Canto della fabbrica” (The Song of the Factory), a piece performed by Salvatore Accardo and his Orchestra da Camera Italiana, written by Francesco Fiore.

The factory also becomes a thing of beauty, in Industry 4.0, as can be seen in the “Spina” section at the Settimo Torinese Industrial Centre designed by Renzo Piano. Buildings originally created for industrial purposes ultimately became landmarks and symbols, as was the case with the Pirelli Skyscraper, designed by Gio Ponti in 1955 and known by all as the “Pirellone”, which became an emblem of modernity in an exceptional moment for Italy during the years of the economic boom.

The factory is also a symbol of transformation, as can be seen in the Bicocca Project, which called for the redevelopment of the area north of Milan. The project then became a symbol of the close bond between the company’s industrial buildings and the urban fabric around it. The project was championed in the mid-1980s by the then president, Leopoldo Pirelli, with its objective summed up in these words: “Bicocca in the 1990s should not be a closed space, inaccessible to the people, but on the contrary an open place, with great potential for communication and economic, social and cultural exchanges. An area where new technologies will speak the language of people”.

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The history of Pirelli is one of a corporate culture that has always combined technology and liberal culture, scientific research and artistic experimentation. Thanks to its long[1]standing partnerships with artists, designers and photographers, Pirelli has always helped bring about a multidisciplinary culture, which has been part of the Group’s underlying values since its foundation.

Art and culture are also prominent in its house magazines and in the global advertising campaigns that have made the history of international visual communication. Pirelli’s relationship with art and culture continues today in projects and activities designed to promote the historic heritage of the Pirelli Foundation and in the exhibitions of contemporary art at Pirelli HangarBicocca.

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On 10 August 1907 the crowd in Paris formed two lines to celebrate the triumph of the motor race from Peking. It was won by Prince Scipione Borghese, the great journalist Luigi Barzini of the “Corriere della Sera”, and the mechanic Ettore Guizzardi.

The winner was the Itala, and the tyres were Pirelli, which raced for about 17,000 kilometres in an adventure that was told in the pages of the book “Peking to Paris: A Journey Across Two Continents” in 1907 by the famous reporter.

The race was a victory for Pirelli and its products and brought it huge international acclaim. Pirelli never stopped after that, going on to win the 1925 Grand Prix World Championship at Monza with Brilli-Peri’s Alfa Romeo, racking up victories on two and four wheels, from the Giro d’Italia to the 6 Days of Sanremo. Then came the 1950s and a thousand miles from Brescia to Brescia, with the Mille Miglia, passing through Rome. This was Alberto Ascari’s moment: two Formula 1 World Championships with Pirelli and Ferrari. And Pirelli is still racing and winning today: in Formula 1 and rallying, Superbike, motocross and cycling. Always looking to the future.

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In 28 January 1872, G.B. Pirelli & C. was incorporated in Milan for the production of articles in elastic rubber. It was the first company in Italy to process rubber, and it was the brainchild of the young engineer Giovanni Battista Pirelli. Born in Varenna, he was the eighth of ten children in a family of bakers. After his initial studies in Varenna and Como, in 1861 Giovanni Battista moved to Milan, where he graduated in Industrial Engineering from the Politecnico University in 1870.

Under his watch, the company expanded rapidly in Italy and abroad and the processes extended to cover a vast range of rubber products, including cables, miscellaneous items and, above all, tyres. Alongside his business activities he also played a key role in political and civic life, becoming a senator of the Kingdom of Italy in 1909. In 1904, his sons Piero and Alberto officially joined him in managing the company. This was a time of huge expansion both in Italy and abroad in the electric and telegraph cable sector and also in the production of tyres. Piero looked after organisational aspects of the company and dealings with the workers, while travels and contacts made Alberto aware of the importance of international relations and an understanding of foreign markets, and he soon became one of the best-known Italian entrepreneurs around the world. Upon the death of their father, Alberto became the managing director and his brother Piero became the chairman of the company, and they retained these positions also after the end of the Second World War.

In 1956, Alberto’s son Leopoldo became the managing director and vice chairman of the company. He was a man of great empathy, with a profound sense of entrepreneurial responsibility, and he led the Group for the following thirty years. These were times of great economic and social upheavals, and he was succeeded in 1996 by Marco Tronchetti Provera, who is still today the executive vice-chairman, and managing director of Pirelli.

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A recently published essay collection attempts to get to the heart of Italian corporate culture

Why are some enterprises unique? And, above all, why are Italian enterprises unique? These are not meant to be idle or rhetorical questions – on the contrary, they are supposed to help those entrepreneurs and managers wishing to improve the way they operate, as well as people who might simply want to understand the causes of such widespread great success.

To this end, it will be very useful reading Il segreto italiano. Tutta la bellezza che c’è (The Italian secret. All the beauty there is), a recently published book curated by Vittorio Coda in his role as vice president of ISVI (Istituto per i valori d’impresa, the Italian Institute for corporate values). Half essay collection on Italian enterprises and half step-by-step narration of a few Italian companies’ stories, this work: is the result of research based on analytics management tools, and its aim is to define the traits that make Italian entrepreneurship outstanding. In other words, the book aims to identify the specific characteristics that make prominent businesses what they are, and act as a handbook for the whole Italian entrepreneurial system, describing those features entailed in the concept of an “Italian secret” – namely, that particular allure that makes so-called ‘made in Italy’ companies unique, all the issues Italy is experiencing and bad economy notwithstanding. As Coda himself explains at the beginning of the book, this piece of research was undertaken due to the “surprising realisation that, even in circumstances hostile to entrepreneurship, businesses existed, they were established and grew, and, further, placed Italy at the top of European and global rankings in several sectors”. The book’s various essays tackle crucial topics such as “dedication to the cause”, the ability to “manage chaos”, effective decision management skills, mastering the creation of virtuous relationships with the territory, the significance of regions, the kind of humanistic entrepreneurship shared by many companies, the propagation of an “Italian corporate model” over time and across geographical space.

A few essential case-studies inspire part of its sections, helping readers better understand the topic, starting with that of Camillo and Adriano’s Olivetti, an enterprise that, still today, is the emblem of an innovative way of doing business, reconciling the need for profit with the demands of social progress.

An (open) “Italian secret”, then, engendered by a particular production culture that evolves over time, develops and diversifies, spreads across the territories and gives Italy a global competitive edge. Moreover, the mention of corporate beauty in the title itself adds an important and significant touch to this book curated by Vittorio Coda – a book that certainly deserve some careful reading.

Il segreto italiano. Tutta la bellezza che c’è (The Italian secret. All the beauty there is)

Vittorio Coda (curated by)

Treccani, 2023

Third-sector activities, amidst economy and new legislative regulations

Subsidiarity and corporate cultures – how the third sector relates to the whole of society. Third-sector organisations whose operations and production should be efficient yet not purely focused on profit, and, a sector that needs to be properly understood in order to be suitably governed through shared regulations. These are the interrelated topics around which Antonio Saporito (researcher at the University of Bergamo) discusses in his “Le Fondazioni nel Terzo Settore” (“Third-sector foundations”), a contribution recently published in the Società e Diritti (Society and Rights) journal.

Saporito analyses, from a legislative standpoint, the nature of third-sector organisations, and after clarifying its meaning he then retraces its legislative history up to the establishment of such foundations, which represent a key tool in assisting current, and future, enterprises.

As the researcher notes, while developing and taking on a leading role in some sectors, third-sector institutions found themselves operating in a precarious balance, amidst laws that pertained to different subjects and a distinct lack of regulations specific to them. The need for clear legislation relating to the third sector – met by the implementation of the Italian Third-Sector Code – subsequently highlighted its strong bond with that subsidiarity principle sanctioned by the Italian Constitution itself, and enhanced the awareness of a third-sector culture that was distinctly different from corporate culture, though not necessarily pitted against it.

Thus, that particular third-sector approach to economic and social interventions became a valuable legislative heritage, and, as Saporito concludes, “Asserting that non-profit institutions expose the fundamental trait of the Constitution’s core principles suggests that their presence, activities and therefore legislative framework all deserve special consideration and that, in the event of possible conflicts, it is the duty of the EU to find forms and ways to integrate, within its system, this national ‘constitutional heritage’.”

Le Fondazioni nel Terzo Settore (“Third-sector foundations”)

Saporito Antonio

Società e Diritti, e-journal, 2023, VIII, no.15

Caring. for health. for life quality. for development – caring in order to lay the foundations for the “economics of happiness” (discussed in last week’s blog post), and thus have at heart the well-being of the people we interact with.

‘Taking care of’ and ‘have at heart’ – two essential and interrelated phrases that come to mind while scanning the news and learning about an extraordinary feat of surgery to restore the sight of a blind person at the Molinette Hospital in Turin, and the innovative decision to combine art masterpieces and medical treatment at Humanitas Hospital in Milan. Cutting-edge science and technology on one side and profound awareness of the relationship between artistic emotions and therapeutic outcomes on the other –unprecedented visions of innovative cultural syntheses.

The Molinette Hospital (public university hospital) in Turin has been considered an outstanding European healthcare institution for a long time. That’s where the team led by Michele Reibaldi and Vincenzo Sarnicola has performed a feat of autotransplant surgery, a procedure involving the transplant of the entire surface of the left eye – blind but in good conditions – onto the right eye, which had been damaged by an autoimmune disease years before: a world first: and a great success, as the patient – an 83-year-old man – regained his sightand can therefore now enjoy a better life.

The notion of improving the life conditions of hospitalised patients is also what drove the decision taken by the management of the Humanitas Research Hospital (private hospital) in Milan: the walls of its complex in Rozzano now display the magnified images of 23 details from 15 artworks by Raffaello, Piero della Francesca, Bellotto, Crivelli, Hayez and other major artists, a choice made because “art is conducive to healing”, as explained by Gianfelice Rocca, president of Humanitas.

The initiative is called “Brera in Humanitas”, as the images displayed on the walls of rooms and waiting rooms are taken from the artworks exhibited at the Pinacoteca di Brera gallery, and aims to add some colour and emotion to the lives of patients, their relatives, doctors and nurses. James Bradburne, director of the Pinacoteca di Brera, asserted that, “We are bringing some of the museum’s magic to the hospital. And not only to embellish white sterile walls, but also to comfort and reassure people in a fragile state. When we go into hospital, we all realise our mortality. As such, there is no better place to display our paintings.” Rocca further added,“Beauty helps us to keep us rooted when we go into hospital, a site where needs conflate.”

Beauty as therapy against strain, pain, fear. Art as comfort,as well as proof that, precisely through the representation of beauty, we can find a way out from the suffering caused by frailty, seek relief from the wounds inflicted by illness, catch a glimpse of light in the fearful darkness of death.

These two news items from Turin and Milan are in some way interconnected, as they both illustrate how science and art, cutting-edge technology and compassion (from the Latin cum and patio: i.e. to share sorrow), are all part of the same human journey – a very civilised journey, a very Italian one.

“Life sciences” attest to this, too, as they blend healthcare, nutrition, high-quality education, scientific research, the pharmaceutical industry, the mechatronics and robotics industries (those sophisticated tools used in the most complex surgical procedures, for example), digital services and Artificial Intelligence applications (the employment of disease and therapy data to develop customised recovery pathways, especially for patients suffering from “rare diseases” as well as to establish effective defences against future epidemics).And it’s indeed in the field of life sciences – also thanks to the close collaboration between public bodies and private companies – that Italy boasts a leading position at both European and international levels.

Despite the limitations, flaws and shortcomings that we all know, the Italian healthcare system is seen, in several scientific and medical spheres, as a positive model to be emulated.

So, let’s return to those two terms we mentioned at the beginning: care and heart. Terms that are pivotal to positive thinking, to laying the foundations of a new economy focused not merely – or not as much – on the financial gain of shareholders (profits, stock market prices) but rather on the values that underpin sustainable, environmental and social development. Although the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) needs to be taken into consideration, as a way to quantify economic expansion, we also – and above all – need to nurture the growth of well-being, as measured by the BES (the Italian Equitable and Sustainable Well-being Index) or by the HDI (the Human Development Index) used in UN assessments.

To establish a new balance, economic rationality is certainly required,but equally crucial is a tangible and kind “emotional intelligence”, able to see beyond the boundaries dictated by economics – the “sad science” – and to fulfil the expectations and peculiar blend of wishes, needs, responsibilities and projects of women and men seen as human beings rather than mere producers and consumers.

Care, then, and heart. “I care”, as Don Lorenzo Milan – champion of the people, of generosity and of communal spirit – used to teach the children in the impoverished and remote village of Barbiana. Only in this way the relationship between humanised technology and beauty will truly enhance our quality of life.

(photo: Getty Images)

Pirelli has long had an interest in the United Kingdom. It all started with the founder Giovanni Battista Pirelli, who bought rubber mixers from the top manufacturer – Joseph Robinson & Co in Manchester – for his factory in Via Ponte Seveso in Milan. There has been a constant flow of information and ideas ever since between Italy and Britain – between Milan and, later, Bicocca and London.

The Pirellis’ trips, and then those of their closest collaborators, came one after the other. As a report now in our Historical Archive shows, one of the first was by Alberto Pirelli, who spent time from 29 November to 5 December 1909 going round factories and exploring technologies, also documenting his travels in letters and telegrams. Many other trips followed, all meticulously described by Alberto. The idea was clear: the plan was to set up a series of production sites in Britain. “We have decided”, said Giovanni Battista Pirelli in 1912, “to build a plant in England for the production of underground cables and electrical conductors in general.” After its exploratory work, the company established itself in the country. It started with an agreement with General Electric, which led to Pirelli General Cable Works Ltd being set up in Southampton. But it was not just a matter of studying technologies and building factories.

Pirelli soon began exporting its products. And not just tyres. This had already been the case in the late nineteenth century with elastic rubber mats for platforms, carriages and entrances which were advertised in the company’s first general catalogue of 1886. These products enjoyed great success in Britain. In 1912, the first catalogue for floors and tiles stated: “The rubber floor has some unique characteristics: it is extremely resistant and durable, and its smooth surface makes it is easy to wash. It does not collect dust and it is soft and elastic and it muffles noise. The variety of colours and decorations that are available makes it ideal to accompany every style and meet all furnishing needs”.

In 1929 a plant was opened in Burton upon Trent, both for production and for experimentation. The Historical Archive contains a detailed technical report on “tests carried out on plasticised rubber”. Dated 17 June 1938, it was sent by the “Pirelli Ltd sister company in Burton upon Trent”.

Tyres, of course, were by no means neglected. Also in terms of communication, for the Archive also contains two photographs from 1930 that proudly show a semi-pneumatic Pirelli tyre mounted on a 26-seater Leyland bus owned by Bishopston & Muston Motor Services Ltd of Swansea (Wales), after it has travelled 100,000 miles.

But the United Kingdom has also played another extremely significant role in the history of communication and in that of the Pirelli brand. This was when, in 1964, Pirelli UK Ltd created “The Cal”^TM – the Pirelli Calendar. Now an icon of corporate communication, it was originally a marketing tool to beat the local competition. “The Cal”^TM soon became a symbol of the Pirelli style, combining innovation and modernity, beauty and defiance. And it has been with the company around the world ever since.

In 1965, just one year after “The Cal”^TM was launched, construction work started on a factory in Eastleigh for the production of high voltage cables using the most modern techniques. Three years later, radial-only tyres began to be made in Carlisle.

British institutions began to pay attention to these developments, starting with the Royal Family. In 1929 the Prince of Wales visited the Burton upon Trent plants: an event that was caught on film, now conserved in the Archive, showing how the Prince took an interest in the work carried out inside the factory. Ninety years later, Prince Charles, the future King Charles III, accompanied by Marco Tronchetti Provera, made a similar visit, this time in Carlisle, where he appreciated the hi-tech systems and the particular focus on aspects related to the environment and sustainability.

Technical excellence and research, innovation and diversification have thus always been a prime feature of the relationship between Pirelli and Britain: more than a century of history that continues today as never before.

The story of Finmeccanica-Leonardo, the group epitomising Italian industry and excellence

Technical and manufacturing skills, ingenuity and science, technology and innovation, and, further, a taste for beauty and a culture able to look beyond – unparalleled Italian industry, though with its many contradictions and inefficiencies. This is what Paolo Bricco narrates in his latest book: Leonardo. Motore industriale e frontiera tecnologica dell’Italia (Leonardo. Italy’s industrial driving force and technological frontier), only recently published.

Bricco narrates, with a journalist’s flare and a historian’s exactness, the story – spanning several decades – of Finmeccanica, founded in 1948 and renamed Leonardo in 2016, starting from a premise stated in the very first pages: “20th-century Italian history features three invariable traits: a deeply embedded attitude for metamorphosis, a compulsion towards innovation, a concealed yet explicit vocation for beauty. Leonardo’s

lengthy history (…) embodies the combination of these three elements,” hence, “the individual for the whole. The whole for the individual. Leonardo is Italy. Italy is Leonardo”. An industrial and economic Italy, at any rate, which is the one Bricco narrates through the life stages of Finmeccanica-Leonardo, a group whose corporate size has always been large and whose own production culture has always distinguished its development, vicissitudes, successes and failures.

As such, Finmeccanica-Leonardo also came to represent an economic policy that shaped post-war Italy, for better or worse, and that continues to denote a considerable slice of Italian industry. As Bricco’s work explains, the public economy – of which this group was, and still is, a key element – had to meet the needs of Italy as a system, as well as to tackle the dynamics of international markets. Above all, however, and looking beyond the single sectors, Finmeccanica-Leonardo has always succeeded in keeping Italy at the edge of the technological frontier, shifting from manufacturing to cutting-edge technological and scientific skills.

Bricco’s narration is subdivided into well-defined sections: the economics of reconstruction and peace, the economic boom and Alfa Romeo, the energy crisis and Ansaldo, civil and military aviation, and space.

It certainly is a complex, often contradictory, difficult and multifaceted yet constantly fascinating story the one that Bricco tells us in a little over 200 pages. It is a future-oriented story that has been built, thanks to Leonardo’s extensive experience, on solid foundations, unique skills and know-how – Paolo Bricco’s book helps readers better comprehend all of this, as well as the particular corporate culture that derived from it.

Leonardo. Motore industriale e frontiera tecnologica dell’Italia (Leonardo. Italy’s industrial driving force and technological frontier)

Paolo Bricco

Il Mulino, 2023