A recently published research study analyses the different ways in which smart working can be implemented

Reconciling life and work, family and salary. Hours that used to be spent in offices and factories and that are now spent in different places – hours that are diversified, dematerialised, take different shapes, involve different tasks. All due to a general change in attitude, but also because of recent events, starting from the COVID-19 pandemic, which has radically changed the way work is organised in several companies. A basic fact, however, remains: work-life balance is developed to suit individual and professional circumstances that will change over time, especially in relation to different stages of life.

Reconciling life and work, however, is still everyone’s goal and it is precisely on this theme that Claudia Santoni and Isabella Crespi developed their research study, entitled Conciliazione famiglia e lavoro tra smart-working e diversity management. Una riflessione su pratiche e nuove semantiche (Reconciling family and work through smart working and diversity management. A reflection on practices and new semantics), published in recent weeks.

Santoni and Crespi start from a simple premise: the practices and strategies aimed at reconciling life and work are effective only when they can adapt to the transitions of family life cycles and of changing processes in work organisations, especially with regard to technology.

The study looks at smart working as an innovative tool that guarantees temporal and spatial flexibility – also facilitated by recent Italian laws – and aimed at giving employees the freedom of organising their own work according to set objectives.

So far, so good. Yet, the two researchers also note how inequality is still affecting these practices and how tools are not always easy to access, which leads to the need of revising and extending their meaning and applications. In other words, even when smart working modes are implemented, some disparities remain and they need to be taken into account. The study explains that the notion of diversifying operational tools and their flexibility according to employees’ resources and individual requirements has an impact on how a company approaches diversity management. As such, explain Santoni and Crespi, an analysis of work-life balance and smart working, as compared to a diversity management approach, could lead to a new practice in itself that could illustrate how workplaces that focus more on welfare issues and tailor them according to people’s needs and differences could guarantee more efficient policies related to work-life reconciliation.

More in general, this research study clearly highlights a particular theme: how a corporate culture and organisation embracing new working tools must also be aware of how they can be implemented in different ways.

Conciliazione famiglia e lavoro tra smart-working e diversity management. Una riflessione su pratiche e nuove semantiche (Reconciling family and work through smart working and diversity management. A reflection on practices and new semantics)

Claudia Santoni, Isabella Crespi

Autonomie locali e servizi sociali, 1/2022

“How is the night?

Clear.”

These are the last lines in Bertolt Brecht‘s Vita di Galileo (Life of Galileo): the scientist has just given in, has bowed to the power of the doctors of the Church, and has disavowed his discovery that the Sun is at the centre of the universe and Earth is a planet revolving around it, thus tarnishing the integrity of scientific evidence in favour of the theologians’ beliefs. He has surrendered, out of fear, to those powerful authorities. Yet, he doesn’t give up and continues to study the stars, the laws of physics and astronomy, because science always entails a certain amount of strength, and research, discoveries, knowledge and truth, – to be verified, debated, put to the test – embody extraordinary beauty.

A new beginning we must experience.

A night sky we must contemplate.

“How is the night?

Clear.”

In spite of everything.

Vita di Galileo premiered at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano on 22 April 1963. The director was Giorgio Strelher and the starring role was entrusted to Tino Buazzelli, who gave one of the most intense and effective performances known in the history of theatre. Even today, people still reminisce about Strelher’s play, especially as part of the Piccolo Teatro’s initiatives to commemorate Strelher’s 100^th birthday, because those dialogues, those scenes, that performance – intense and piercing, yet full of hope – captured the poignant moment when human experience has to deal with scientific and moral issues that will make the history of progress and development, leading to a more balanced civilisation.

Thus, the night is clear – even in our difficult times, marked by health crises and technological frailty, extraordinary opportunities for economic growth and insufferable social disparities, great scientific progress and increasing environmental disruption, heart-rending wars, such as the one in Ukraine, and the violation of millions of people’s right to a better future.

These are uncertain times, as we’re coming to terms with the dangers of a recession, of growing inflation, with rising rates leading – after years of stillness – to higher prices, and with rifts in the international trade system. Jamie Dimon, CEO of major international bank JP Morgan, expressed his concerns and his prediction that “an economic storm is approaching” now needs to be taken seriously.

Risky times, then, which we might be tempted to view poetically, as per Eugenio Montale’s words: “All we can tell you today/ is what we are not/ what we want not”), though we should also confide in the opportunities – related to health, quality of life, improvement of working conditions – brought on by scientific achievement. We need to move forward, through the crisis, avoiding the shadowy traps of so-called “magical thinking” that fears knowledge and science, and welcoming the prospects that research offers in terms of tackling the challenges engendered by such a complex period (as the work of Giorgio Parisi, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics, shows). In his Lezioni americane (American Lessons), Italo Calvino detects that same complexity as a constant feature of the human condition, as well as a drive towards innovation, following non-linear paths and thinking patterns, yet with the awareness that, in spite of everything – twists, disagreements and contradictions – as we journey through this night we can already glimpse the first light of dawn, just like Galileo.

Particular sites exist where these complex and contentious cultural and social conditions interweave and evolve: production facilities, industrial plants, factories. Factories, indeed: an outdated word that has, nonetheless, recently made a comeback and is now at the heart of public debate, in a period where Italian and European “industrial pride” is on the rise.

In the 19^th century, factories were a symbol of modernity, of the new dimensions of production and consumption, of disruptive social and economic transformation. Then, over a long and controversial 20^th century, a century marked by the advent of cars and mass mobility, chemistry and telecommunications, consumption and new lifestyles, conflicts and widespread wealth, factories became central to the political and economic spheres, And even now, while scientific and technological innovations, the digital economy and Artificial Intelligence, are leading “services” and so-called “third-sector” activities to the forefront, factories – or, even better, neo-factories – maintain their pivotal position within the economy, because that’s where developments affecting science and technology, work and life, research and production, economic needs and social values, innovation and environmental protection, converge, generating competitiveness and environmental and social sustainability.

At the beginning of the new millennium, factories seemed to have disappeared, were confined to large yet peripheral areas, were hidden away from the heart of “progress” – now they’re back on the scene, with new assets and new values.

Factories, that is, “civilised machinery” and “industrial humanism” – now turning into “digital humanism” as it gradually incorporates scientific and technological innovations. Special places where original production and cultural concepts arise and are experimented with, and in which the awareness of a relationship between industry and culture, of the vital bond between industrial manufacturing and cultural production, is growing.

In fact, industry and culture don’t actually belong to two different spheres, but are part of the same world (this gave rise to a long debate last week, in Rome, at the Stati Generali del Patrimonio Industriale (General assembly on industrial heritage) conference, organised by AIPAI (Italian association for industrial archaeological heritage) and Museimpresa (Italian association of business archives and corporate museums).

Doing business, especially in terms of industrial manufacturing, means investing in – and working on – the changes that are reshaping markets, consumption, production technologies. It means focusing on research and innovation, keeping abreast of technical and social transformations. Innovation it’s key, as it embodies a strong cultural and symbolic significance and as it encompasses pretty much everything: technologies, materials, new products and the new processes required to make them, industrial relationships between the various segments of the corporate and working worlds, corporate governance, the languages of marketing and communication. What’s all this if not scientific culture, economic culture, humanist culture – in brief, entrepreneurial culture? In other words, we need to shift from the traditional juxtaposition of “business and culture” to a more robust, valuable notion: “business is culture”.

In this context, a historical perspective will pick up on a particular concept, that of a “progressive” company, to emphasise the term used by Giovanni Battista Pirelli in a speech from 1873, one year after the company was founded (and its echo resounds among the pages of Una storia al futuro. Pirelli, 150 anni di industria, innovazione, cultura (Thinking Ahead. Pirelli, 150 years of industry, innovation, culture), recently published by Marsilio).

A company, that is, bolstered by cutting-edge technologies applied to the manufacturing of rubber products, but also a company that shows great care for the “human touch”, and that is open to innovation in the widest sense of the term (products and production, materials, corporate organisation, social commitments). A company intensely aware of its role, amid agreements and disagreements, as a driving force in building a common history offering a better economic, cultural and social balance.

Wisdom, both old and new.

“All things are full of labour more than we can say; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing” we read in Ecclesiastes 1.8 – essential reading when one has to deal with history and the pace of its change. And the idea that “the eye is not satisfied with seeing” extraordinarily captures a desire for discovery, scientific curiosity, technological passion – essentially, all that restlessness about innovation that characterises an enterprise – not much driven by profit (although that’s still a requisite) but, above all, by change, as a company’s culture and ethics will inform values, conditions and the future, as well as its own activities and attitudes.

Innovation, then.

“Adess ghe capissarem on quaicoss: andemm a guardagh denter” (Let’s try and understand it: let’s have a look inside) were the words beloved by Luigi Emanueli, engineer and father of modern electrical engineering, who, in the first half of the early 20^th century, introduced several innovations related to Pirelli cables and tyres. Let’s, indeed, have a look inside machines and products, and fully understand how they work. Let’s build, disassemble and reassemble. Let’s glimpse inside with a scientific attitude and mechanical knowledge.

Those words also encapsulate a deeper feeling that has inspired the best developments and competitive aspects of the entire Italian industry. A commitment to do and do well, creative intelligence, a preoccupation with constant improvement – essentially, the acknowledgement of one’s own excellence, which allows Italy to remain as competitive – in technical and production terms – as other European and international countries that benefit from robust businesses, financial wealth, availability of raw materials, public funding for enterprises, scientific research and its related technological applications. The EU Recovery Fund, which in Italy takes the shape of PNRR (Italian recovery and resilience plan), points in this direction, just as other potential future EU plans related to energy and safety might do. The path is steep, but it’s the one we need to follow – finding strength, perhaps, in Galileo and in a “clear night” for science.

London, 1851. The first ever universal exhibition was held in Hyde Park, attracting about 14,000 exhibitors in sections devoted to raw materials, machines and inventions, manufactured products and the fine arts. This was the first of a long line of World Expos, which are commercial but also cultural events, held periodically in major cities around the world, where countries show off the progress they have made in industrial production, and in science and technology. The Paris International Exposition was held in 1889, celebrating the centenary of the French Revolution with a tower standing more than 300 metres tall, built by Gustave Eiffel. We know that Giovanni Battista Pirelli was there at the event. He wrote a letter to Giuseppe Borghero, the director of the Pirelli factory in La Spezia where they made submarine telegraph cables, inviting him to visit the sector devoted to electricity: “I have recently returned from the exhibition and you may yourself find that, if you wish to limit yourself to a quick general visit and a more detailed inspection of the mechanical and electrical sector, a week may well suffice.”

Very early on, Pirelli had started showing its products at trade fairs and national events (such as the Italian general exhibitions of 1881 and 1884, and the international bakery and milling fair in Milan in 1897, with a pavilion devoted to electricity), and it took part for the first time in a World Expo in 1900, in Paris. Although the company already had a vast range of rubber articles, it was decided to show only those used in the electricity sector. This was partly due to the lack of space, which, as a brochure pointed out, was something from which “the whole Italian Section suffers”. Samples of all manner of cables were shown at the 10 x 5-metre stand – cables insulated in gutta-percha, in textile materials, in vulcanised rubber, for telegraphs, telephones, electric lighting, and for transporting energy. And then there were submarine cables – with a model of the cable-laying ship Città di Milano on show in a glass case – and underground cables, including a special type used for transporting energy at 2500 volts, which was used to light up 500 lamps on a panel inside the stand, showing how Pirelli cables could carry electrical energy at extremely high voltages. Pirelli and Franco Tosi, a metalworking company at the exhibition with three 1200 horsepower steam engines for power plants, won the Grand Prix awarded by the Expo.

In 1904Pirelli took part in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, under the personal guidance of Piero Pirelli, who went to the United States also so that he could look at American industry and sign new sales and supply agreements. Here there was far more space, as the head of the electricity department of the Expo pointed out in the letter, dated 11 May 1903, in which he invited Pirelli to take part: he presented it as an opportunity that should not be missed, for the space available (500 hectares), which was much more than had been offered by the fairs up to that moment, and for the participation of exhibitors from all over Europe but also from Latin America, Canada, China and Japan, which meant it would be possible to get in touch with representatives from these countries as well as with those from the United States.

At the Saint Louis stand, Pirelli put on a large sample display of its rubber products (technical, sanitary and haberdashery items, toys, coloured balls and a deep-sea diver’s suit) and of insulated electric wires and cables and it was awarded the Grand Prix in the Manufacturing section of the Elastic Rubber and Gutta-percha Industry group, as well as the Gold Medal in the Electricity section of the Telegraphy and Telephony group. The Gold Medal was the highest honour awarded to any of the electric cables companies present, both American and European. A gold medal was also awarded by the Exhibition to engineer Emanuele Jona, who had taken part in the International Electrical Congress, which was held in the city from 12 to 17 September 1904. On that occasion, he had presented some important breakthroughs in the field of very high voltage electrical cables, which had caused a considerable stir in the field of international electrical engineering. As expected, the Exhibition was a great opportunity for establishing important relationships in the sector. The engineer Elvio Soleri, a member of the Italian Electrotechnical Association, wrote to Pirelli saying that “Messrs Holmes Brothers of Chicago wish to enter into relations with you as representatives”, that the Canadian Compagnie Internationale d’Électricité “wishes to enter into correspondence immediately” and that the Ontario Power Co. representative had left his business card.

This led to a whole series of relationships with the world of industry that has continued to this day, also through participation in recent trade fairs and exhibitions of international importance.

A sharp and objective book summarises the bonds between corporate history and marketing

Memory and history as marketing tools to promote one’s image and products. Heritage, that is, understood as product attribute and comprising symbolic content, such as bonds with the past, founding figures, their families, the first production techniques, the people who made the product or brand famous, the historical context, the native regions. Heritage embodies a complex concept, which needs to be well understood and deployed with care. A concept that is also part of good corporate culture when, indeed, it’s properly framed within the potential it can bring and its limitations.

Heritage di prodotto e di marca (Product and brand heritage), written by Fabrizio Mosca (who’s been teaching economics and corporate management, as well as marketing and corporate strategies, at the University of Turin and its Business Administration School for a long time) makes for an excellent contribution to these themes.

The book looks at heritage from a particular angle: the marketing perspective of companies that operates in luxury markets worldwide. An interesting viewpoint that could also be useful to other sectors in more specific markets.

Mosca starts from the premises that, in marketing terms, companies have to adopt strategies that recall and enhance their heritage in order to compete in markets dedicated to goods with a high symbolic value; indeed, in this segment, having a product and a brand with unique and distinctive features – such as an ancient history linked to a legendary and unforgettable founding figure, a family or an emblematic place of birth – represents a source of competitive advantage, permanent and difficult to imitate. Heritage, then, as a genuine working tool related to the technical qualities of the product that embodies it. According to the author, the significance of these immaterial attributes also marks the deep diversity that exists between luxury and fashion markets and those more permanent markets related to consumption goods, where the concept of heritage has less value.
In a little less than 200 pages, Mosca explores all this, also including relevant theories and practices about heritage. After an analysis and interpretation of relevant literature and reference models related to heritage, the author goes on to contextualise product and service concepts – understood as the totality of tangible, intangible and symbolic attributes – and creates a specific reference model aimed at enhancing heritage in luxury goods based on the content analysis of 150 brands. He subsequently identifies the operational and strategic marketing actions that companies implement in order to manage and recall, in modern key, their own heritage.

Theory accompanied by a good amount of practical considerations – a combination that makes this book a very useful one, as on the one hand it comprises a significant amount of good corporate culture and, on the other hand, it provides practical tools to companies who might want to better understand this topic and then embark on their own heritage path. The table (displayed over several pages) at the end of the book is very good and, above all, very interesting, as it summarises the various elements that compose the heritage strategies of several companies belonging to the luxury sector.

Heritage di prodotto e di marca (Product and brand heritage)

Fabrizio Mosca

Franco Angeli, 2022

Research tells us which steps to take and the benefit of local networks in generating employment opportunities

Being young and in need of a job, in a world as complex as this. A goal that can be achieved by combining personal skills, regional networks, meeting companies’ needs – not an easy path to take, yet a possible one, at least.

These are the themes around which revolve the research studies collected in Competenze trasversali e digitali per il futuro del lavoro: il caso del progetto Engage (Transversal and digital skills for the future of employment: the case of the Engage project), curated by a team of authors that includes local researchers and professionals. More in detail, this volume’s essays tackle the theme of youth employability, with particular reference to the research undertaken to analyse digital and soft skills, which nowadays are considered crucial for the future of employment. Indeed, this publication is the outcome of a complex project (Engage), which saw a collaboration of regional enterprises, third-sector bodies and universities aimed at reducing the gap between job request and job offers. After a section dedicated to the relationship between university education and people’s employability, the research studies include, among others, topics ranging from the help available nowadays for the development of digital and transversal skills to the exploration of a possible self-evaluation model related to soft skills created specifically for the Engage project, as well as a description of the Engage project itself – which aims to promote career management skills to targeted students in schools and universities – and an analysis of the career management skills method underlying lifelong learning and placement opportunities for young people.

In addition, these research studies also represent a valid example of good practice with which research can build networks for the development and planning of a community that is both inclusive and able to generate further inspiration for growth.

A good combination of practical real-life examples and the creation of a network including research and actions already undertaken is what best informs this work’s content, which represents: a great example of regional engagement aimed at developing employment opportunities on the territory, as well as its corporate culture.

Competenze trasversali e digitali per il futuro del lavoro: il caso del progetto Engage (Transversal and digital skills for the future of employment: the case of the Engage project)

AA.VV., Franco Angeli, 2022

In such controversial times, marked by crises and change, Italian industry is trying to find new paths towards a better “future-oriented history”, relying on the country’s heritage of ideas, knowledge and experience to redefine the principles of competitiveness, and emphasising the strength of “industrial humanism”, which is now evolving into “digital humanism”. The use of a term recalling the past – heritage – it’s helpful when thinking about how to build stronger production foundations in this era of “selective re-globalisation” (as mentioned in previous blog posts) and in markets that have become tougher and more demanding. Fundamentally, industry is facing a true cultural challenge.

The concept under consideration is one that entails what can be termed “the future of memory”, situated within a critical relationship between historical awareness and the will to achieve sustainable innovation. As such, Italian entrepreneurs, proponents of the so-called “polytechnic culture”, now have the responsibility to invest in our heritage (in productive sites, products and processes, research methods and activities, patents, industrial and market relations, languages) and use it as leverage to attain better competitiveness, as well as environmental and social sustainable development. The Stati Generali del Patrimonio Industriale (General assembly on industrial heritage) conference, held in Rome from 9 to 11 June and organised by AIPAI (Italian association for industrial archaeological heritage) and TICCIH (International committee for the conservation of the industrial heritage), as well as Museimpresa (Italian association of business archives and corporate museums), is both a key event and an open acknowledgment of this entrepreneurial spirit, embodying a vital relationship between the academic and corporate worlds, between history and future. It’s an event that recognises the role that nostalgia has in this context but minimises any sense of “retropia”, Zygmunt Bauman’s concept that well encapsulates the feeling of delusion experienced by those who idealise the past, finding it more reassuring, and are incapable of looking to the future “with hope and trust”.

What’s the role, then, of historical awareness in corporate culture? And how to link it to the specific dimensions of entrepreneurship, i.e. creativity, innovation, growth? Why, in essence, should we invest in promoting industrial heritage and in corporate museums and archives?

Fernand Braudel, one of the major historians of the 20^th century, provides us with an initial answer: “To have been is conditional to being” – in other words, history is always looking to the future.

We can also rely on the writings of Edmondo Berselli, an extraordinary author able to combine political and social observation with an ironic take on everyday habits and culture: “Life has to be saved in its entirety and there’s only one way to do this: rewrite it, transpose its breath on the page. Constantly revive it through memory.” Indeed, after its untimely demise, in 2010, we are left with some powerful memories of him, as well as his insightful books: “It’s a hermeneutic principle: readers change, listeners change, viewpoints change, so the text must change, too.” A text that captures past life, experience, knowledge and thus history, and therefore keeps on living.

Memory defies time and builds the foundations of the future. “The future of memory” is not actually an oxymoron, on the contrary, it’s a notion that has its place in the world of innovation, in the radical transformations that are galvanising the economy, production and consumption relationships, and industry.

The corporate museums and archives that are part of Museimpresa, an association founded more than 20 years ago by territorial entrepreneurial institutions Assolombarda and Confindustria, are a great example of this.

Indeed, what do we mean when we talk of “corporate culture”? We mean an aspect of general culture that knows how to integrate, in new ways and right here in Italy, humanities and scientific knowledge, projects and products, industry and services, human passion and sophisticated technologies. In a nutshell, a multidisciplinary, “polytechnic culture” – a transformational culture.

Factories or, rather, digital neo-factories are emblematic sites of this and in these times characterised by the knowledge economy and Artificial Intelligence, it’s imperative to elaborate new intellectual concepts that can cross through the various disciplines – engineering and philosophy, mechatronics and sociology, economics and neuroscience – and thus draft new maps for knowing and doing.

These are precisely the dimensions of corporate culture that are driving the development of our companies in this new competitive context, made even more difficult and contentious by the dramatic events we are experiencing, amid the consequences wrought by climate change, pandemic, recession and war.

There truly is a great production capacity we can utilise to better compete, found in territories with the most enterprises, in industrial districts, in corporate networks and supply chains. Renzo Piano, an exponent of “social tailoring”, explains it further: “I spent my life building public spaces: schools, libraries, museums, theatres… And then streets, squares, bridges. Places where people share the same values and feelings, learn about tolerance. Urban spaces that celebrate the ritual of meeting with others, where the city is understood as civilisation. Places for a better world that can light up the eyes of those who pass through them.”

Here is where we can start anew – from an urban civilisation that embraces change and builds a more balanced relationship with its territory, and from an industry that sinks the roots of its international competitiveness into regional wisdom, blending industrial heritage with a view to the future.

Corporate museums and archives and the cultural and academic associations that deal with industrial heritage reveal, in this context, special dimensions and characteristics. They are sites for the preservation of History, which is narrated through products, images, documents, patents, employment contracts, technical drawings, etc. They are evidence of the relationships between manufacturing and its surrounding territories, they’re born within an entrepreneurial path and tell us how the past informs innovation.

Underlying all this is the awareness of a strong bond between cultural heritage and a corporate attitude for generating work, well-being, social inclusion. Objects and documents clearly illustrate a culture deeply rooted in the ability to “do, and do good”, just as material culture has now come to represent a key aspect of history and general knowledge (as expounded by the circle of historians surrounding the French journal Annales d’histoire économique et sociale (Records of economic and social history). Thus, History also comprises the history of factories, production, services, the relations behind economic and social change.

The concept of design is an undisputed proof of this, as it entails quality, beauty, functionality, distinctiveness, because a design item – be it industrial robots or components from the automotive, aviation, mechatronic, chemical and rubber sectors – always embodies a country’s image as well as its many qualities.

Gio Ponti, one of the most prominent Italian architects of the post-war period, who designed the Pirelli Tower (symbol of the most dynamic Italian industrial identity for the past 60 years) summarises the notion in just a few key words: “In Italy, art fell in love with industry. And that’s why industry is now a cultural phenomenon.” It’s also why industrial heritage and corporate museums, together with all the places, objects and documents they preserve and promote, have essentially become the ambassadors of Italian style in the world – and as such, competitive assets, too.

An essay-novel about the life of Francesco Cirio helps us better understand what being an entrepreneur means

Enterprises as adventures – without too much hazard, of course, but with a good deal of daring for sure. Applying some prudence, perhaps, but with a will to succeed at all costs. Stories that no management manual could capture. Stories that recur over the years, all different yet all united by a common thread. Stories that, when you read them, teach you a lot, even when they sound a little fictionalised (which, at times, they are).

This is the case of Che il mondo ti somigli (May the world be like you), a recently published book inspired by the life of Francesco Cirio, founder of the eponymous company. A man of humble birth, hailing from the Piedmont region, his is a story about a young man who set out to make his fortune, for both himself and his family, in a mid-19^th-century Italy ruled by social divisions.

Written in collaboration four years ago by Allegra Groppelli and Beba Slijepcevic, this book unravels through a continuous interplay between scenes from the end of Cirio’s life and milestones of his entrepreneurial career: living the countryside, coming to the city (Turin), the first jobs, the discovery of a new way to preserve food, the growth of a company that would soon become renowned all over the world of that time. An uphill climb leading to a successful life, though not without any sorrows and troubles. “He liked the scent a job well done would leave on him”, write the two authors about Cirio somewhere in the book – which really reads like a novel (and claims to be one from the start), while also realistically describing the Cirio company’s key traits up to this day.

Groppelli and Slijepcevic are skilled screenwriters and, indeed, this is an extremely enjoyable book, which in parts seems wholly fictional (as acknowledged by the authors themselves). Nonetheless, it makes for a useful read that allows us to gain a better and deeper understanding of one of the companies that (for better or worse) have made Italian industrial history.

“You dream, you act, and then something comes true. If you don’t hold back, this something can also exceed your expectations. Yet, nothing is yours forever. In the end, you need to know how to let go” says the protagonist towards the end, where a fine, concise description of Francesco Cirio can also be found: “A great man, industrialist, innovator, trader, dreamer, who had increased the wealth of the country.” An innovator and a dreamer, just like any entrepreneur should be.

Che il mondo ti somigli. La saga di Francesco Cirio (May the world be like you. The saga of Francesco Cirio)

Allegra Groppelli, Beba Slijepcevic

Sperling & Kupfer, 2022

A research study by the Polytechnic University of Milan investigates the truth

A company that endures over time, outliving its founders and creators: this is the common aim of all discerning entrepreneurs and managers, yet also a difficult goal to achieve, especially when considering the many different changes in circumstances affecting the company every time its ownership changes – and this goal is even harder to accomplish when the transfer of ownership occurs within the same family.

As such, learning about the practicalities involved in each case is as important as understanding the theoretical implications.

Thus, reading Family Business Succession: A Business Case Study on HEAT S.r.l., research thesis by Roberto Cortinovis recently discussed at the Polytechnic University of Milan, is very worthwhile.

The object of the research, as stated by the author, is to investigate what characterises “a succession in a family business, taking into account the figures involved and the main points to be taken into consideration.” Cortinovis immediately plunges into the heart of the matter: “Many theories tried to standardize the common features that can be found in different family businesses, but, due to the heterogeneity of them, some specific considerations and assumptions need to be” verified in each case.

This study applies theoretical knowledge to provide a first interpretation of the circumstances before tackling a concrete case study: that of HEAT S.r.l., a small-medium Italian business founded and managed by Pierangelo, the owner, “who is going to soon retire.” The company, the author adds, is actually owned by three people, Pierangelo and his two brothers, and their families are involved, too – especially their children, the second generation expected to take on the business over the years.

Essentially, Cortinovis’s work analyses a classic examples of what typically happens in the Italian industrial system – and this is precisely why it makes for intriguing research.

Family Business Succession: A Business Case Study on HEAT S.r.l.

Roberto Cortinovis

Thesis, Polytechnic University of Milan, Master’s of Management Engineering, 2022

Which music best describes factory work? Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No 2, composed in 1937, used a factory siren to evoke early 20^th-century industry, steel, smoke, mass production’s heavy-duty work, while the second half of the century saw compositions by John Cage, Luciano Berio and Luigi Nono featuring metallic noises, clashing sounds, dissonances. And today we have Salvatore Accardo’s violin and the strings of the Orchestra da Camera Italiana, the Italian Chamber Orchestra, performing Il canto della fabbrica (Factory Song), which renders the rhythm of the new millennium’s digital manufacturing processes, driven by computers, robots and Artificial Intelligence files – a whole new way of conceiving the relationship between machinery and the workforce, as well as between industry and environment. Indeed, over time production methods change, high-tech transformations quickly develop and the knowledge economy gains momentum and, analogously, the kind of music able to narrate all this acquires dramatic new forms.

In the 20^th century, factories shaped the common way of thinking about manufacturing approaches and mass consumption, with all the conflicts and related mitigating negotiations that came with it. Yet, that way of thinking has resonated through the ages and today we are feeling the impact of the transformation brought about by major scientific and technological innovations on most production policies and outcomes. And the way we’re thinking about the economy is also changing – digital factories epitomise this metamorphosis, as they modernise manufacture and products, materials, roles and occupations, language, regional establishments and adaptability to global markets, a larger mass of consumers but also more special niches.

Are these neo-factories or post-factories ? It doesn’t really matter, it’s all manufacturing, driven by progressively faster and surprising innovations. What kind of music, then, could truly express this animation? On this subject, Gustav Mahler’s words are certainly inspiring: “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire” – a remarkable quote that, though concise, succeeds in capturing the essence of modernity, as it perpetually flows along a stream running between past and future.

The story of Il Canto della fabbrica, a project by the Pirelli Foundation, started with a meeting: a meeting involving engineers, technicians, high-tech digital industry experts and musicians from a string orchestra. This prompted an inventive debate comprising different languages, skills, visions, an open dialogue where experiences were shared. And thus, during the last month of 2017, the Canto was born, an “exploration” carried out through four musical notes in order to put to music the rhythms and sounds of one of the most innovative production establishment, the Pirelli plant in Settimo Torinese, the so-called “beautiful factory”. It’s a transparent, inclusive, sustainable, bright, safe – and as such more productive and competitive – factory that includes the “Spina” (plug), a hub comprising services and research labs designed by Renzo Piano, an architect particularly attuned to beauty, the environment (the main building is surrounded by 400 cherry trees, a factory in “a cherry orchard”, recalling a literary masterpiece) and to music, of course; indeed, Piano is a good friend and admirer of Accardo.

The “beautiful factory” is really not just about aesthetics, it’s the product of choice, that is, a will to turn production facilities into cultural forces aimed at interpreting the times and underlining contemporary change – an economic decision but also a civic one; a strong statement about a sustainable corporate culture, a culture of doing good, a culture of well-being.

Thus, the music of Il Canto della fabbrica becomes an essential stepping stone within this process, as it embodies a dimension filled with overlaps and contrasts: absolute immateriality – music – with notes inhabiting air and soul, and absolute materiality – the factory – with its machinery, steel, rubber, weight, goods. Nonetheless, this juxtaposition is not entirely appropriate, because a factory is not just about machinery but also about the idea that conceived it, the passion from which it originates and which it inspires, the moods that accompany its pace and the creativity that marks its evolution. Hence, from the material we return to the immaterial, through a process that’s even more apparent in our times of digital factories, bits and data. And the shared language between music and factories lies in yet another sphere of creative and productive thought: mathematics.

The author of the Canto is Francesco Fiore, one of the most prominent Italian musicians, who has composed this piece to be interpreted by Salvatore Accardo and the strings of the Orchestra da Camera Italiana he conducts, with Laura Gorna as first violin. Music born from the factory, then, and performed as a world première right where it was born: in the Industrial Hub in Settimo, on the afternoon of 8 September 2017, during MiTo (the music festival taking place in Milan and Turin), in front of an audience counting about a thousand people (of which many were plant’s employees and their families). The music has now returned to the factory and from there it now travels from world stage to world stage.

The next stop is Trento, for the Festival dell’Economia (Economics Festival), on the evening of 3 June. Not just a fleeting event amongst many others crowding the schedule but something more: the embodiment of a profound process of change leaving its mark on cultures, behaviours, relationships, as well as narration – indeed, a veritable new narrative structure conveying Calvino’s notion of “lightness” through music. Global music for a global factory.

And, even today, what’s the meaning of this encounter?

To begin with, it concerns the various notions about the extraordinary – and ongoing – transformation of factories through Industry 4.0, in a country like Italy, which still ranks as the second manufacturing country in Europe, after Germany. Production facilities change, machines become digital, the field of mechanics is now that of “mechatronics” (i.e. involving much more electronics). Robots, computers, increasingly intricate virtual relationships, big data, the internet of things, data science and data analyses. Blue-collar labourers turning into white-coat experts, tablets to control packaging or turning machines and coordinating all stages of the supply chain up to logistics and markets. Roles entailing increased awareness and quality and constantly developing knowledge. In a nutshell, what we have is the Italian flair for quality manufacture but with a high-tech spirit, although, of course, roles and people’s skills are now different.

Hence, the “beautiful factory” has a new image, a new culture, its own music, even. Innovation, here, captures and develops the rhythm of time, it inspires sounds.

Here it is, then, Il canto della fabbrica, blending observation, listening and discovery as well as dialogue, amid instruments, machines (mixers, calenders, “Next Mirs” robots), violins, cellos and violas; amid industry technicians and musicians, rhythms that inspire and can be reimagined, and silences to represent both a break in production and an “inner space where music can resonate” (in the progressive words of a great Italian musician, Salvatore Sciarrino). Production exposes unique sounds, originally reinterpreted by the Orchestra’s music. Work, culture and musical narration. Creativity born out of crossbreeding.

Innovation and change, indeed. And life – as Accardo likes to say, quoting Nietzsche: “Without music, life would be a mistake.”

Underlining the themes from which inspiration was drawn, the maestro, Fiore, explains, “A factory intended as a place built by humans altering the natural environment to create their own work space, and where shared knowledge and labour must blend into a final product: music. The silent dance of robots, whose movements express a mechanical grace so alien to natural human gestures. The coexistence of the old and the new, human struggle and seemingly unemotional and indefatigable automatons, ancient machinery and state-of-the-art computers. I attempted to pour all this into my piece: as if from a single idea or an original cell (in this particular case, the notes E-C-G-C sharp) one could, through transformation and reinterpretation, create something that remains connected to its generating source yet is able to follow different ramifications, contradictory or conflicting at times, which may arise from a development process.”

Music and community. As Salvatore Accardo recalls, “With Francesco Fiore, we spent almost a year rehearsing, experimenting with sounds and harmonies. And we shared the important experience of ‘doing things by hand’, handling the raw material – in this case musical, instrumental material – moulding it according to the characteristics of the performers, renewing ancient knowledge.”

Indeed, ‘doing things by hand’ is precisely what factory work is: manufacture. And this is fascinating, reiterates Accardo, “a creative convergence between musicians and technicians, musical-minded men and women as well as engineers and labourers. Work and sound. The synthesis of deep emotions.”

The five finalists for the Premio Campiello were announced today, Friday 27 May. The prestigious literary prize for works of Italian fiction was set up in 1962 by the industrialists of the Veneto region and Pirelli is again sponsoring the event this year.

During the ceremony, the Jury of Writers voted on the more than 300 books admitted to the competition by the Technical Committee, and chose the five finalists:

– Nova by Fabio Bacà – Adelphi Editore

– La foglia di fico. Storie di alberi, donne, uomini by Antonio Pascale – Einaudi Editore

– Stradario aggiornato di tutti i miei baci by Daniela Ranieri – Ponte alle Grazie Editore

– Il tuffatore by Elena Stancanelli – La nave di Teseo

– I miei stupidi intenti by Bernardo Zannoni – Sellerio Editore

Over the coming months, the Jury of Three Hundred Readers will read the five books and choose the winning title, which will be proclaimed in Venice on 3 September 2022.

During the Selection Ceremony, the winner of the Premio Campiello Opera Prima was also announced. This prize has been awarded since 2004 to authors making their literary debut. The coveted prize was won by Francesca Valente’s Altro nulla da dichiarare (Einaudi Editore).

To watch the Selection Ceremony, click here.