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.

When talking about the South of Italy, two key terms come to mind: knowledge and markets. Let’s forget bad old habits involving claims for reparation (“…the State, which from the Unification of Italy onwards has humiliated and marginalised the South, must give us…), Neo-Bourbon nostalgia, and welfarist lures (using the “citizenship income” – the Italian welfare allowance dependant on income and citizenship – as a shortcut to find employment it’s just the latest unhealthy practice). Let’s think, instead, about productively investing in infrastructure, starting from education (quality schools and universities) and digital networks, and supporting all that’s required to encourage entrepreneurship, productivity and competitiveness, to enable companies to grow and fulfil their fundamental role as positive social actors for wealth and change.

More in brief, when redrawing the map of a Mediterranean territory that’s become strategic within international geopolitical and geoeconomics relationships (the war in Ukraine is the latest, shocking chapter in a series of wide-reaching changes), let’s reimagine the South of Italy as an economic area strongly integrated into the European Union as well as a dynamic space.

The chances arising from the constantly evolving “knowledge economy” and the “digital economy”, with their implications related to the extraordinary applications of Artificial Intelligence in all industry, services and cultural sectors – leading to a drastic alteration in terms of time and space – are precisely those that can situate the South of Italy in a position where seizing economic, civic, environmental and social development opportunities, rather than “making up for delayed growth”, is now the priority.

This is a novel European and international context that can only be understood by gazing beyond the narrow horizons of patronage-driven localism and provincialism. It’s a context that poses new challenges not only to Brussels and to Rome and Milan – the two Italian capitals where political power and innovative economy reside – but also to public administration bodies and social actors, starting with companies and without neglecting the more progressive and enterprising individuals hailing from the South of Italy.

These are the themes that resounded throughout the “Verso Sud” (“South-bound”) Forum, held in mid-May in Sorrento by Italian Minister for the South and Territorial Cohesion Mara Carfagna (“Over the course of a thousand conferences, the South has been defined as the ‘Mediterranean logistics platform’. And, today, we’re actualising that platform, thanks to major investments in its sea ports – €1.2 billion – and reforms and infrastructure provided by the Southern Special Economic Zones programme, because this is a territory that lies at the ‘heart’ of our development gambit. A territory where investing will finally be more convenient, easier and faster, thanks to reduced bureaucracy and tax relief measures.”). Those same themes were also discussed in Palermo at the end of last week, at the “Med in Italy” international meeting, promoted by the Confindustria Young Entrepreneurs organisation and chaired by Riccardo Di Stefano – “Med” as in the Mediterranean area, of which the South of Italy could become the focal point for “investments and innovation”.

Of course, a focal point not merely in geographical, but also in political and economic, terms. In a world where trade routes and power relationships are being redefined, under the thrust of the dramatic events we are experiencing (the effects of climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and the recession, and now the war in Ukraine and its direct impact on European obligations), the push towards a veritable “paradigm shift” in political relations and social and economic development is accelerating.

What we need, in fact, is a critical reinterpretation of the many ideas that, recently, have guided the course of globalisation and the digital economy, as well as a plan for a “selective re-globalisation” that includes reshoring processes aimed at shortening supply chains (length makes them fragile and not very efficient) by relocating them in the heart of industrial Europe – without yielding to the temptation of protectionist notions but rather renovating and relaunching the whole international exchange system under the banner of fair, well-regulated trade.

Bringing back production in Europe – and as such in Italy, too – is what would bring the South of Italy into play, an area that should be made attractive in terms of resources, investments, talent, high-tech production hubs, as well as services, logistical infrastructure (ports, “sea routes”, interports as part of the modernisation of railway and airports), and knowledge hubs.

The South of Italy is brimming with smart and creative human capital – indeed, for years, young women and men from the South have had to leave their home towns in order to find better working and living opportunities elsewhere, from Milan to larger cities in Europe and in the world. And let’s not forget about its widespread entrepreneurship that, though fragile, endures despite the many constraints (a sub-culture built on patronage, prevalent inefficient and corrupt public administration, cushy temptations of welfarist assistance, rampant illegal work, and the many facets of an economy based on crime and terrorising mafia organisations that “bring bread and death”).

Here’s a key point: the aptly named Next Generation EU Recovery Fund, whose resources are especially important to Italy and its South – 40% of national funds are destined to the latter, if it proves it can invest them in productive projects and radical reforms – should be mostly used to support the southern region’s younger generations, to regenerate and relaunch their schools and universities, freeing such institutions from familial hegemonies that are stifling their potential and encouraging them to grow, building virtuous collaborations with the best Italian and European institutions and enterprises.

As a matter of fact, the 2021 investments from Apple and other high-tech companies in Naples point to a trend bent on enhancing local skills and talent in southern cities. Moreover, just a few days ago, news came in about similar ventures by Pirelli and BIP, in Apulia and Sicily respectively: on Friday, Pirelli announced the opening of a Digital Solutions Centre in Bari, integrated into the group’s international software services network, in collaboration with the Apulian region, university and polytechnic university, while BIP (Business Integration Partners, a multinational consulting company from Milan headed by Palermitan Nino Lo Bianco) has presented the project for a Centre of digital services in Palermo, interlinked with the other 13 BIP offices worldwide. These two instances represent a major acknowledgement of how the new dimensions of the digital economy and of smart working can offer extraordinary opportunities for growth, skill development and employment, as well as a recognition of the new generations’ capabilities and undertakings within a European and global context rather than just a local one.

Knowledge, entrepreneurship, skills and markets – as we said above.

Thus, drawing new knowledge, production and consumption maps has now become a real necessity in order to reassess political, economic and cultural decisions about “progress” and the geographic, social, gender and generational balance in the South of Italy, too.

Environmental and social sustainability, accompanied by strong reformist convictions, is key: we’re not talking about implementing green washing or welfare adjustments, but about forging a new political and economic path following the criteria inherent to a civil, circular and “just economy” (to reiterate the message from Pope Francis, a message also widespread within the most prominent international economics literature and major financial and business circles).

Italian companies possess some fundamental qualities at their core: the innovative power integral to a dynamic social capital and the depth of a culture moulded by industrial humanism, an ideology that has defined Italy’s economic history – a culture that combines historical awareness of its own open and multifaceted identity (and the South of Italy is an inspiring example of this) with forthcoming social and civil assets, with the ultimate aim of defining what can be termed the “future of memory”, a future with a distinctive Mediterranean flavour.

The Pirelli Foundation will be taking part in the Festival dell’Economia di Trento 2022 with two events linked to the promotion of the company’s corporate culture. The Festival is organised by the Autonomous Province of Trento and the 24 ORE Group, in collaboration with the University of Trento and the City of Trento.

On 3 June at 5 p.m., at the Municipal Library, Antonio Calabrò, director of the Pirelli Foundation, together with Paolo Bricco, correspondent for Il Sole 24 Ore, will present the book Thinking Ahead: Pirelli, 150 Years of Industry, Innovation, and Culture. The new book, edited by the Pirelli Foundation and published by Marsilio, is a collective account of the most important technological innovations made by Pirelli from its foundation in 1872 through to the present day.

At 7.30 p.m., the evening will continue with a concert entitled “Il Canto della Fabbrica” at the Filarmonica, where Maestro Salvatore Accardo, conductor and solo violin, together with the Orchestra da Camera Italiana, will perform the Piano Concerto no. 1 by J.S. Bach – with Gile Bae as solo pianist – and Giuseppe Verdi’s Quartet in E minor. The musical programme of the evening will revolve around ‘Il Canto della Fabbrica’, a piece inspired by the rhythms of Pirelli’s digital factory in Settimo Torinese. Commissioned by the Pirelli Foundation in 2017 from the composer Francesco Fiore for the violin of Maestro Accardo, the work represents the contemporary factory and its most recent transformations in the form of music – a beautiful factory, in the sense of beautifully designed, bright, safe, and sustainable.

Today and tomorrow – 1 and 2 June 2022 – the notes of ‘Il Canto della Fabbrica’ will also resound inside the Auditorium of the Pirelli Headquarters in Milan, where Maestro Salvatore Accardo, first violin Laura Gorna and the members of the orchestra are guests for the concert rehearsals.

A published inventory of mining archives narrates a century of hard work

Documents recording toil and entrepreneurial ingenuity. Papers, drawings, maps, work plans, photographs, individual stories – this and much more can be found in the Montecatini – Montedison – Solmine mining archives, recently opened to the public. The result of this long and delicate reorganisation and cataloguing work carried out by Simonetta Soldatini has just been published: yet another significant element in a widespread corporate culture that makes Italy pretty much unique.

Gli archivi minerari Montecatini – Montedison – Solmine a Massa Marittima (1898-1989) inventario (The Montecatini – Montediso – Solmine mining archives at Massa Marittima, 1898-1989 inventory) – this is the title of the recently published research work that collects the inventory of the mining archive preserved in the Documentation Centre of Niccioleta, in Tuscany, which consists of over 20,000 binders full of documents of all kinds: from personnel files to pay slips, tags, correspondence and over 7,000 maps, mine plans, photographs and drawings of machinery. An enormously valuable heritage resource that helps piecing together the history of the mineral exploitation of Tuscany’s Colline Metallifere (Metal-bearing hills) between the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century. Soldatini spent ten years reorganising the mass of documentation retrieved from the mines: a painstaking cataloguing work that was undertaken thanks to the support and collaboration of local bodies and institutions and that is now collected in a research work that is also an inventory and a work tool.

And what does it all amount to? Well, to an almost century-long profound testimony to mining work, as well as the record of the technological skills of an industry that has been too quickly forgotten.

Yet, the region succeeded in keeping its memory alive through some significant volunteering initiatives (which, in fact, also led to this inventory of documents).

But there’s more: Simonetta Soldatini’s research has now become a work tool for the investigation and narration of further entrepreneurial stories, thus contributing to cultural growth in the broader sense – that is, available not only to scholars but also, for example, to young people and schools. This is a book to be browsed and read, and – especially – to be used as a means to understand part of our past history.

Gli archivi minerari Montecatini – Montedison – Solmine a Massa Marittima (1898-1989): inventario (The Montecatini – Montediso – Solmine mining archives at Massa Marittima, 1898-1989 inventory)

Simonetta Soldatini (curated by), Polistampa, 2022