Despite its creative nature and an aptitude for amazing recoveries, Italy risks running out of a resource that’s essential to development: people, and young people, above all. We are indeed heading towards a “demographic winter”, with declining birth rates and an increasingly older population – a veritable “unhappy degrowth”. And this is happening while the country is already in the thrall of a deep crisis affecting education, a crisis that’s gradually worsening as competitiveness and the quality of its economic and social growth are suffering from the ascendancy of the “knowledge economy”, as the challenges entailed by the so-called “digital economy” and the widespread presence of Artificial Intelligence demand people equipped with a substantial critical cultural background. Meanwhile, sinking graduate numbers have placed Italy at the bottom of EU ranks, and the number will keep on falling over the next years. Is a decline really unavoidable, then? Will we no longer be able to write a “future-oriented story”?

To get a clearer idea, let’s have a look at some figures, taken from recent data released by ISTAT (Il Sole24Ore and La Stampa, 8 April). In 2022, for the first time since the unification of Italy, the number of births fell to fewer than 400,000 children (393,000 to be precise), with 713,000 deaths. Basically, seven babies and thirteen deaths – almost double the number of births – for every 1,000 inhabitants.

Over the past five years, Italy lost a million people, its population dropping below 59 million (with the South ravaged by rising emigration: 629,000 inhabitant less than in 2018). Moreover, the country has grown old: the average age is of 46 years and there are more than 14 million people aged over 65 years, that is, 24% of the population (after Japan, we’re now the oldest country in the world).

“Italy is fading away”, drearily tweeted Elon Musk, while Giuseppe De Rita, president of CENSIS (the Italian research institute on social change) provided a broodier and more comprehensive account: “We are a country without any notions of a future, without motivations, without goals. The younger generations no longer have children, and they no longer get married, too. They do not even set a low bar for themselves for forming a family.” (Corriere della Sera, 8 April). Most of them suffer from precarious employment conditions, high living costs in the larger cities, scarce availability of family services (schools, nursery schools, etc.) and negligence concerning women’s employment – just a few of the reasons for this widespread lack of confidence.

Chiara Saraceno, sociologist preoccupied with social inequality themes, summarises issues and prospects as follows: “Supporting people who choose to have children implies a commitment to integrated and ongoing policies that allow young people to be able to think about the future with a reasonable amount of confidence and that create contexts able to nurture both the children born and raised within them and their parents”.

International comparisons show that “in Europe, the highest fertility rates (though mostly below the reproduction levels) and lower differences in age groups are found in those countries offering more opportunities to young people and better equipped with services able to care for newborns, as well as more congenial to working mothers. Financial assistance is important, if continuous and substantial, yet less so than early childhood services, support for gender equality, conciliation policies”.

Essentially, our issues encompass a demographic decline, a weak social fabric and a lack of reforms, as well as scarce quality and training of human resources, which affect productivity and economic competitiveness in industries and services. “In 20 years’ time there will only be 80,000 graduates”, worryingly estimates Francesco Profumo, president of philanthropic foundation Compagnia di San Paolo and former minister of Education, Universities and Research (during the Monti government), as well as former president of the Italian National Research Council.

It’s easy maths: this year, about 500,000 students, predominantly born in 2004, will take their high-school examinations – in 2004, however, the number of high-school students amounted to 800,000, which means that, in almost 20 years, the high-school student population has almost halved. Now, out of these current 500,000 students, 60% will go to university – 300,000, then – and only 60% of them will graduate in four or five years: 180,000 graduates. If this trend continues, out of the 390,000 children born this year, 240,000 will take their high-school exams in 2041. 140,000 will attend university, and 80,000 will graduate. Too few for sure.

What can we do? We can push for new demographic policies, knowing however that due to their long-range nature we’ll only see the results in 20 years’ time, and in the meantime, explains Profumo, “We must learn to manage immigration”. In other words, we need a long-term plan to attract young people to Italy, young people with a drive for development and the desire for a future, and we must train them and provide them with opportunities.

Profumo adds, “Demographic issues, just like immigration and education issues, are central to our future. Yet, political parties want immediate results. And this is certainly of no help to Italy”.

We are “a country unaware of the dynamics that govern the world”, asserts Luca De Biase (Il Sole24Ore, 8 April), that is, a country that doesn’t care about innovation, oblivious to the challenges posed by our modern times currently undergoing an intense and fierce “metamorphosis” engendered by the environmental and digital twin transition.

Nowadays, the creativity and innovative entrepreneurship generated by the economic boom, the dynamism that marked the 1980s, the commitment to Europe and the euro, and the momentum gained after the COVID-19 pandemic, are all in danger to be thwarted by this fall in confidence and by the educational and cultural deficiencies affecting the new generations.

As such, we need an education system moulded by the values and the criteria of a “polytechnic culture”, able to combine humanities and sciences and driven by a multidisciplinary approach, blending cyber science, philosophy, mathematics, the law and social science, in order to write Artificial Intelligence’s new “algorithm maps”, as well as of technical, engineering and creative minds, from manufacturing to services. We also need an education system focused on critical awareness and well-disposed towards smart cities, as well as towards all the new types of circular and civic economy, and development founded on environmental and social sustainability.

Essentially, we need to rebuild “the notion of future”, and make innovation possible once again – that’s what good policies are for.

(photo Getty Images)

Rise of a “new renaissance” featuring the latest, cutting-edge technologies – in Italy, too

Digital versus real. Virtual versus tangible. Opposites that do not cancel each other out but actually, and increasingly, exist together and integrate into each other, and to which social activities and production operations must get used. Digitalisation as a path that must inevitably be undertaken by all, with some care and moderation, however.

These are the interdependent topics that Francesco Caio and Pierangelo Soldavini tackle in their recently published Digitalizzazione. Per un nuovo rinascimento italiano (Digitalisation. An Italian renaissance), a book that deals, clearly and effectively, with a complex and often misunderstood topic.

The work was inspired by real-life events: the pandemic emergency, inflation, the war in Europe, the energy crisis – all this has basically overturned our world and prompted the need of facing a “new normal”. The two authors argue that these circumstances gave rise to, and accentuated, the importance of digital tools, which allow for increasingly fast and flexible relationships and services, offering personalised custom-made products. The issue is how to “govern” these new technologies and thus the “hybrid world” that will ensue.

A challenge that, the work emphasises, must be undertaken knowing full well that those who stay behind now may not be able to bridge the gap later on. Further, a challenge that is very significant for Italy, a country that, objectively, is rather behind in terms of digitalisation. Yet, also a challenge that could inspire a “digital renaissance”, with all the benefits that might follow – a renaissance that could have an impact on various different areas concerning the country’s civic and economic life, such as the public sector, telemedicine, cybersecurity, digital citizenship, smart working, tourism, schools and universities, and much more.

Hence, Caio and Soldavini start exploring this topic by looking at how to “dissipate resistance” in the long term, scrutinising the infrastructural aspects that should be implemented and assessing several applications that could already prove effective. Paths and goals that could be achieved with investments (the PNRR, the Italian recovery and resilience plan, gets a mention too, of course) but, above all, with the creation of a veritable digital culture that could lead everyone to understand the reasons why these new standards and transformation should be attained – an ambitious and extremely urgent project that, nonetheless, is within our reach.

Towards the end, the book includes an excellent and important assertion that outlines “a culture that changes in full awareness of the consequences of technology and of its own actions, that teaches people to assess the excesses and pervasiveness of technologies that, by their very nature, are all-encompassing and able to take over all aspects of our personal life. And that will turn into the ability to master the danger of such technologies controlling and manipulating consciousnesses, which may arise as a result of a constant and warped use driven by business motives”.

Digitalizzazione. Per un nuovo rinascimento italiano (Digitalisation. An Italian renaissance)

Francesco Caio, Pierangelo Soldavini

Vita e Pensiero, 2023

A thesis defended at the University of Padua analyses the theoretical and practical links between 4.0 technologies and sustainable production

Sustainable production and sustainable innovation – a relationship that may be taken for granted, yet not actually so easy to achieve. A relationship that, indeed, needs to be further investigated and analysed in order to be fully understood.

To this end, reading Marco Bettiol’s thesis, defended at the University of Padua, Department of Economic Sciences, proves very useful.

Entitled “Innovazione e tecnologie 4.0: sfide e opportunità per uno sviluppo sostenibile” (“Innovation and 4.0 technologies: challenges and opportunities for sustainable development”), it presents a significant analysis of the current situation, as well as the historical relationship between innovation, 4.0 technologies and sustainable production. In particular, as Bettiol explains, the study “focuses on analysing the relationship between innovation and sustainability” with the aim of “examining how technological innovation could contribute to the promotion of sustainable development”.

The research paper first investigates key innovation concepts and sustainable development goals, before tackling “4.0 technology” and its positive implications for sustainability. Finally, the third section of Bettiol’s study looks at two case-studies concerning two companies from Treviso: Gasparini Industries S.r.l., an engineering company that manufactures hydraulic press brakes and guillotine shears, and Meneghin S.r.l., a company leader in the global market for the planning, construction and assembly of equipment for the professional intensive breeding of rabbits. Two examples amongst many that, however, well illustrate the connections explored in the thesis.

Bettiol’s research provides a fair and square contextualisation of the innovation and sustainability theme, and this is what makes it a valuable read.

Innovazione e tecnologie 4.0: sfide e opportunità per uno sviluppo sostenibile (“Innovation and 4.0 technologies: challenges and opportunities for sustainable development”)

Thesis, Marco Bettiol, University of Padua, M. Fanno Department of Economics and Business Sciences, Master’s in Economics programme

Narrating entrepreneurship, its values, its pace, its history and future, in order to acknowledge and promote the key features that distinguish Italian identity and its “do, do well and do good” approach, with a view not to lose Italy’s place as second manufacturing country in Europe, just after Germany. Entrepreneurship understood in terms of work, wealth and well-being, innovation and community spirit, and narration intended as the representation of values and as the backbone of genuine “industrial pride”, on which to build our sustainable development.

To attain all this, we need to make use of all the languages best suited to illustrate our current reality: films and videos, such as those made by film-makers capturing factories and workshops through inquisitive lenses; writings, such as those selected over the past three years by the ‘Premio per la letteratura d’impresa’ (‘Corporate literature award’), organised by ItalyPost; photographs, such as the images showcased at the outstanding exhibitions held at the MAST Foundation in Bologna, co-founded by outstanding entrepreneur Isabella Seragnoli; contemporary art, such as the Ritratti (Portraits) and NOw/here installations by Gian Maria Tosatti, with a nod to Kounellis, Burri and Tàpies, currently on display at the HangarBicocca site – a “spotlight on the industrial era”, according to the Il Sole24Ore, 2 April. And also music, such as Il Canto della fabbrica (Song of the factory) performed by the Orchestra da Camera Italiana and directed by Salvatore Accardo, a piece inspired by the sounds and beat of the Pirelli plant in Settimo Torinese, a building designed by Renzo Piano. And finally, to get back on topic, theatre.

L’Umana Impresa. La fabbrica degli attori (Human enterprise. The actor factory) was staged last night at the Teatro Franco Parenti in Milan, directed by Stefano De Luca: the theatre’s Great Hall was packed and the audience responded with continued and thunderous applause – we’ll go into more details shortly.

Here we are then, theatre. Some time ago, in autumn 2015, L’impresa va in scena (Business takes the stage) epitomised the theme encompassing the Culture Week organised by Confindustria and Museimpresa, featuring theatre performances in ten Italian cities. A few years before that, at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, director Serena Sinigaglia presented Settimo, la fabbrica e il lavoro (Settimo, factory and work), a piece integrating the accounts of labourers, technicians and engineers from the Pirelli plant.

Then, over time, an increasing number of initiatives arose, all inspired by the strong bonds that tie together entrepreneurship and performance, industrial manufacturing and the craft skills involved in designing sets and costumes, research labs and theatre labs – all activities driven by a common awareness that both entrepreneurship and theatre are “communal” experiences (as also attested by the efforts in promoting and supporting theatres undertaken by entrepreneurial families such as Falck, Borletti and Pirelli in driving the foundation of the Piccolo Teatro in Milan).

Andrée Shammah, activities coordinator at the Teatro Parenti, deeply believes in the relationship between theatre and entrepreneurship and in the value of cultural crossings, and, as well as likening “entrepreneurship” to the efforts made by those who bring theatre to life and focusing on the concept of theatre as a “lab”, also integrates common notions such as ‘sharing’ and ‘contagion’ – cum and tangere (from the Latin, ‘with’ and ‘to touch’). Because, indeed, the spirit of theatre is contagious, it infects an audience, and an audience is rewarding only when it’s engaged. Contagious, too, is the drive to innovation and engagement in factories, as engagement breeds competitiveness, and therefore progress.

Connections that consolidate relationships. Once upon a time, there was a bolt factory in Via Pier Lombardo, just where the Teatro Parenti stands now, and Andrée Shammah jokingly says that, “Here, perhaps, there are sprites inhabiting the site and inspiring its soul” – industrious sprites.

But let’s go back to the L’Umana Impresa. The piece is the outcome of a protracted workshop project by six young actors (Tobia Dal Corso Polzot, Elia Galeotti, Lorenzo Giovannetti, Claudia Grassi, Edoardo Rivoira and Emilia Tiburzi), led by director and coordinator Stefano De Luca and playwriter Veronica Del Vecchio (whose accomplishments also include bringing back to life works by Dino Buzzati and Leonardo Sinisgalli).

After conducting research in the archives of the Pirelli Foundation, conversations, and sessions in high-tech industrial “research and development” labs, the actors put together a performance narrating Pirelli’s 150 years of history, starting with its founder, Giovan Battista Pirelli. And, at the same time, they challenged themselves to work as a team, a team busy undertaking research and reinterpretation activities on the stage –

a veritable “actor factory” indeed, which well describes an initiative that travels between past and future, just like manufacturing does. An open-ended, experimental piece that revolves around eight key terms: Materials, Factory, Machine, Theatre, Path, Worlds, Nature, and Future. Yet, also an instructive investigation of the multiple meanings embodied in the notion of “entrepreneurship” and of the motivations behind industrial culture and production processes, motivations that change together with the times, technologies, methods, working conditions and markets. And, moreover, a multi-voiced reflection on the relationship between historical awareness and contemporary challenges, on the power of memory as a condition for corporate competitiveness, on the “metamorphosis” set in motion by production and social processes.

Indeed, the nature of products and services, of story-telling and innovations, are the factors that, over time and in such complex and selective global markets, consolidate the ability to withstand competition.

In essence, what we see played out on stage are topics that have been long neglected in theatre performances – the value of entrepreneurship and work, and this also gives the chance to show new generations how enterprises are in fact extraordinary places, in which to nurture personal projects and ambitions.

The première was held last week, in front of a special audience comprising 450 young adults, aged from 16 to 18 years old, from technical institutes in Milan. “When they left, they were spellbound,” stated managers at the Pirelli Foundations, “as they discovered a world, the industrial world, which they didn’t know anything about, brimming with digital technologies, professional challenges, a future rife with personal and professional opportunities”. And, in the case of Pirelli, also a universe featuring high-tech products connected to competitive sports, such as Formula 1 racing, as well as embodying a cutting-edge culture embracing environmental and social sustainability, communication, and the relationship between science and society.

Now, the ambition is to “bring the L’Umana Impresa to other schools, to university students at the Polytechnic and Bocconi universities in Milan, and then to other cities”. Entrepreneurship on stage, then, to keep on weaving “a future-oriented story”.

Friday, 21 April 2023. The Pirelli Foundation offers guided tours entitled “Pirelli: The Architectures of Industry. From Via Ponte Seveso to the Bicocca District”. These are held as part of the “Dai borghi alla città Dalla città ai quartieri” programme, which celebrates the centenary of the incorporation of the Municipality of Niguarda into the City of Milan. The event is organised under the patronage of Municipio 9 and the City of Milan, in collaboration with the Bicocca Committee, among others.

With the help of the historical and contemporary archival documents now preserved by the Foundation, participants will be able to retrace the history of both Pirelli and the Bicocca district. The district, which was part of the Municipality of Niguarda until 1923, has been radically transformed over the past hundred years. Visitors will find out about the main buildings that have made the history of the Long P brand, in a temporary exhibition devoted to some of the company’s buildings in Milan: the modern canteen designed by Giulio Minoletti in the 1950s, the Pirelli Tower by Gio Ponti, and the Bicocca Headquarters designed by Vittorio Gregotti.

Three admission times: 5 – 6 – 7 p.m. (duration: 45 minutes)

Admission is free, while places last, with booking required at this link. Registration ends on Wednesday 17 March 2023.

Visitors’ entrance: Pirelli Foundation, Viale Sarca 220, Milan

Click here for the full programme of the “Dai borghi alla città Dalla città ai quartieri” event.

For more information please write to visite@fondazionepirelli.org.

The special opening of the Milano-Bicocca Headquarters once again confirms the support and participation of Pirelli in FAI Spring Days 2023 organised by FAI (The National Trust for Italy), a third-sector entity (ETS).

On Sunday 26 March 2023, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., guided tours with the staff of the Pirelli Foundation will help visitors find out about the company’s rich historical, artistic and cultural heritage, taking them on a journey from the late nineteenth century through to the present day.

The visit to the Headquarters will range from the Pirelli Foundation (with its Historical Archive with four kilometres of documents, the exhibition Pirelli: When History Builds The Future and the temporary exhibition Designing Light: Pirelli and the Architecture of the Workplace), to the fifteenth-century Bicocca degli Arcimboldi and on to the Headquarters with its historic cooling tower, the heart of the old factory and a symbol of the workplace.

For further information on how to take part and on the places that will be open during the FAI Spring Days 2023, please visit www.giornatefai.it.

“Adess ghe capissarem on quaicoss: andemm a guardagh denter”, is the phrase in the Milanese dialect (“Now we’ll understand something, let’s go and look inside”) that Luigi Emanueli, one of the greatest Pirelli engineers in the 1940s and the inventor of both the fluid-filled cable and the famous Pirelli CINTURATO™, often used to say.

Looking inside the production machines and products to keep experimenting with them. Innovation is in Pirelli’s DNA and it runs all the way through the history of the company: in the search for increasingly sustainable materials, in new products and process technologies, and in the field of communication.

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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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