Available online the proceedings of the webinar on human capital, innovation and tradition. 10th Meeting promoted by the Eurispes Laboratory

Available online the proceedings of the webinar on human capital, innovation and tradition. 10th Meeting promoted by the Eurispes Laboratory

Below are the proceedings of the 10th meeting promoted by Eurispes’ Human Capital Laboratory. The focus of the debate was ‘Innovation and Tradition: building the future of work between culture and business’.

The meeting was held online on 10 April 2024. The following took part in the discussion: Antonio Calabrò, President of Museimpresa, Francesco Cacopardi, Director of the Luigi Gatti Institute Study Centre of APA Confartigianato Imprese Milano, Monza and Brianza, Guido Saracco, former Rector of the Polytechnic University of Turin, and Benedetta Cosmi, from the Eurispes Laboratory Coordinator on Human Capital.

Benedetta Cosmi: The world of work, which at times has prejudices and stereotypes, also has Innovation to be triggered within a tradition, and this is a bit of the thread running through today’s event, also thanks to my guests, whom I thank and greet: Antonio Calabrò is the first guest to whom I will then cede the floor; we have Guido Saracco, who is fresh from this transition as Rector of the Turin Polytechnic, so he will also tell us first-hand how transitions from one role to another are experienced, a condition that now affects the world of work itself. We will then, with a play on words that has been used by Confartigianato itself, also examine ‘craft intelligence’, which beyond the slogan is something truly intriguing. To pass the floor to you, Antonio, thanking you for your many roles with which you look at the world of industry and therefore the world of work and society, even in the aspect of culture, I would like to play on one of your books that speaks precisely of industrial pride. So we go from industrial pride and we go through Craftsmanship, so we certainly have all the nuances in there; in between there is the university, which is a bit of a glue in the world of training and Skills, in the ability to remain tied to one, which is the one of the country, but to bring it to an open, innovative society, capable of competing in a healthy way with the best of the possibilities and opportunities that the young and not so young have to find in our country as well. So, the floor is yours, thank you.

Antonio Calabrò: Thank you Benedetta, and thank you to everyone who listens to us. Thank you also for remembering “Industrial Pride”. It’s a Mondadori book from 15 years ago and it was written as a reaction to a widespread anti-enterprise opinion, which was quite prevalent in many circles in this country, as if we were not the great industrial country that we are. Not a country of large industries, but a country of small and medium-sized enterprises, supply chains and large industries leading the way. A country on the move, a country that has manufacturing as one of its fundamental cornerstones, its identity. “Industrial Pride’ was born from there, it is a tale of companies that were already holding their own against international competition at that very complicated time, less complicated than now but already complicated, which was the aftermath of the great financial crisis, the debt crisis, the speculative bubble crisis, the great Wall Street crisis of 2008 that then infected the markets. I believe that industrial pride is another point on which we must still insist today in a very transversal way with respect to the world of production. So, companies: industrial companies, artisan companies, from this point of view with all the differences; I do not believe, however, that there are radical differences or oppositions. We are a productive country, and our being productive is a strength not only with respect to the economy, but much more so with respect to the civil and social fabric of this country, to use big words, with respect to the democracy of this country, because factories, workshops, are places where being together has connotations that go beyond that. The theme of our conversation could also be put another way, namely: what are the reasons that keep this country competitive? How does this country continue to grow? The first judgement we could try to make is precisely the international competitive framework. We are today in a condition of particular and dramatic difficulties, greater than in the recent past. We faced the debt crisis of 2008 and our companies were very good at starting to grow again: they invested, they innovated, they also made good use of the tax benefits of that sacrosanct measure that was Industry 4.0, which was then suspended, which was financed less than it should have been, which was not followed with conviction – fortunately the Draghi government has put it back on track and we can now speak with conviction of Industry 5.0. Manufacturing capacity, tradition, innovation. But today the real point of uncertainty, after Covid, is linked to the international order, the geopolitical framework of great turbulence and imbalances. We can be very good at innovating, transforming things, occupying the niches with the greatest added value on global markets, but the tensions of war block, for example, one of those fundamental channels through which raw materials, semi-finished products and Italian goods pass, which is the Red Sea. Here, we must learn to live in a season of uncertainty and turbulence. We have never known such turbulence, and we have a very complicated horizon ahead of us because it is determined, for example, by the course of the forthcoming European elections. What kind of Europe will the European citizens who will vote for want, a Europe of money, a Europe of nations agreeing on a few essential but minimal issues, of economic relations, or a more integrated Europe, with a single market, with that single market on which Enrico Letta and Mario Draghi are now working properly on behalf of the European Commission. And will this Europe be able to give itself a security policy, which means energy, defence, raw materials? An industrial policy, a fiscal policy, a social policy to deal with the competition coming from the United States, India, China? Will we be able to deal with this? And what context will the US elections give us from the point of view of US public support for the economy? We are moving, in short, within uncertainty and turbulence. Within this framework, we, the Italian company, claiming in the meantime a European industrial policy, what levers can we rely on? Here is the intelligence in your title: innovation and tradition. The first easy quote that comes to mind, hyper-noted, is that essential phrase by Carlo Maria Cipolla who said that Italians have been used since the Middle Ages to producing beautiful things in the shadow of bell towers that please the world. Cipolla was a genius: the ability to synthesise on our entrepreneurial identity and our ability to plan for the future, such an ability to synthesise is truly rare. I believe that Cipolla in that sentence as long as a tweet grasped some elements that today are levers of strength of our company: our history, knowing that in a competitive world like the one we are living in, you can copy anything, you can circumvent patents, you can follow in the wake of others’ innovations – Guido Saracco is much better and more competent than I am from this point of view. But there is one thing you cannot copy: identity, history, and our history is one of our resounding strengths, if we consider history not as nostalgia for the glorious past, and if we consider our businesses, our ability to know how to do and do well as an open, multiple, inclusive, even contradictory identity. An identity in which pieces of civilisations that have come from the Mediterranean and Europe over time are added together: Made in Italy is the synthesis of all this, and perhaps a word of clarification is worthwhile on Made in Italy. In the current meaning of Made in Italy, if we were to ask the general public, we would identify three sectors: furniture, clothing, and food. Spaghetti, fashion, sofas – that is, furniture, design. But be careful, because if I move from the current opinion to the export data, I see that the sector in which we have the most added value with respect to those 670 billion of exports that make us one of the most powerful and most dynamic exporting countries in the world; if I look at that data, the sector that has the greatest impact on exports is mechatronic engineering: we are a fantastic mechatronic country. Craft enterprises are familiar with digital transformation, fewer than would be necessary, but more than is generally perceived. Of the 150,000 companies in Confindustria, a share is not yet inside the environmental and digital twin transition, but we are walking along this road, knowing that precisely the production chains, which is one of the strong connotations of our industrial landscape, hold small and medium-sized companies together and allow the small ones to stay within the dynamics of transformation innovation. Alone, we cannot do it; by being together – supply chains are a way of being together, districts and meta-districts and networks are ways of being together – we can face this competitive environment. On the subject of production, I look at the production capacity, and the production capacity of those sectors that have within them innovation not only of the product, but a lot of production, of the way of doing things. If I think about sustainability and read Simbola’s reports, I realise that Italian companies, those that have a very strong relationship with the territories they come from, have a natural tendency towards sustainability, because it is precisely the relationship with the community of reference that makes it necessary for those companies to have widespread social consensus, positive social capital in order to be able to invest and grow, and they are – to put it evangelically – leaven of active communities. This is a characteristic that has a lot to do with another dimension, and that is a specific aptitude of our companies in sectors that are mechanics, mechatronics, cutting-edge pharmaceuticals, chemistry, rubber, shipbuilding, aerospace, a marked aptitude to follow criteria of the Polytechnic culture. I know this is an expression that Guido Saracco likes very much, as do my friends at the Milan Polytechnic. The two polytechnics Milan and Turin are one of the security points of this country; polytechnic culture, what does that mean? I think of Vittorini, but I also think of the roots in Carlo Cattaneo, I think of the application now, I think of the civilisation of machines. Cultura Politecnica which is an extremely original, very Italian synthesis of humanistic knowledge and scientific culture; sense of beauty and ability to do; Leonardo’s mechanical drawings and the beauty of those mechanical drawings. So beautiful are they, that when with Confindustria we opened our representative office in Washington, we organised an exhibition of the Tables of the Atlantic Code at the Martin Luther King Public Library in Washington, an exhibition that was extraordinarily successful because we brought to the American public the testimony, with Leonardo’s technical drawings, of savoir faire and the ability to represent. Here, this polytechnic culture is one of our strengths and has to do with what we are as a country in the shadow of bell towers,’ Cipolla rightly says, thinking of our enterprise spread across the territories, ‘and with an ability to grasp the transformations over time with a flexibility, with a sense of measure, with a sense of quality that elsewhere, in other very strong productive countries, we do not have. To look at the big picture, we tailor steelworks, we tailor industrial plants, we tailor machines, we tailor cutting-edge engineering, we tailor the most innovative avionics, we tailor the most sophisticated pharmaceutical products. This idea of measure, which coincides with quality, which coincides with beauty, is a characteristic of ours, a piece of that polytechnic culture on which it is worth continuing to insist. The relationship with the territories, from this point of view, is fundamental because territories are knowledge and wisdom, which transforms over time. Here, the mistake is probably to think of ‘Made in Italy’ as the typical and the Amarcord: a very serious mistake that should not be made because ‘Made in Italy’ is much more sophisticated, much more technological, much more capable of adapting the processes of Artificial Intelligence even to small artisan workshops along activities that are done together. This combination is probably the key on which Sistema-Italia can play a special role within Europe. The last consideration has to do with people. Now, I know that this is often a way of saying: ‘we companies are our people’. Then I look at this and I find low entry wages for young people, I find a presence of women in the world of work far below the same capacity of supply and demand on the part of the market, far below what our universities do not produce, far below an original tendency of our polytechnic schools to teach not only science subjects, STEM (Science Technology Mathematics Engineering) but also STEAM. The idea that engineers study philosophy is an extraordinary idea; it is not just about knowing how to do something, but about knowing why you are doing something, and what the spin-offs are. Here, we have this human capital that is social capital, and it is worth betting deeply and with conviction on our young people. From this point of view, and this is the last consideration I would make, wasting the opportunity of the PNRR – and I hope it is not wasted – would be an enormous responsibility we would have towards our girls and boys. I would stop here.

Benedetta Cosmi: Thank you. So, we have seen the transversality of knowledge, which has a tradition because it has always been this way; given that in Italy we like ‘it has always been done this way’ then ‘it has always been done this way in other times’, in fact, from before Leonardo onwards, and so trying to break down watertight compartments is one of the main objectives that we set ourselves from the outset with the Workshop; hence, trying to overcome all those limitations. I remember when we had Minister Messa, speaking of chancellors and rectors, who was struggling with overcoming those constraints that, for example, led to having only one degree, you could not study several subjects at the same time, and therefore in the Italian case several faculties, and this obviously creates a constraint, a limit, a barrier to knowledge that is absolutely anomalous, and therefore has been, let’s say, partly overcome. Interdisciplinary curiosities are fundamental for research and also for product innovation, process innovation to which you referred. You were making me think, with the reference to Europe, of the issue of European infrastructures, which we had addressed with the other rector – in that case the president of the Crui, Ferruccio Resta – that is, the idea that European infrastructures can overcome other limits, those of the typical barriers of a country with respect to a need that is greater, that cannot be circumscribed by geographical boundaries, because in some cases, in order to compete, those almost imaginary barriers must be broken down. Therefore, on the issue of the NRP, the fact that there is no European infrastructure is a limitation, because having redistributed money to the same countries that are, after all, the ones that feed, let’s say, the common credit or debt, is a bit ridiculous. In other words, you go and give money back to those countries that had not been particularly able to fill the often territorial gaps, so it is obvious that we would have needed a European imagination on how instead to provide a continent, in that case a Union, with something more, a quid extra, often on research issues. We also saw this in the Covid period, when the answer to certain products did not come from Europe, but we see it in technology where we have more standards, although we need those too, but we have more standards, i.e. Europe is more normative. From this point of view there is a greater impact in America, which is able, even as a public response, to incentivise, so there is not only private capital, which is already enormously greater in number even, let’s say, in population. Then there is also the public’s ability to focus on strategic assets, and so we come to you, Guido, both in your experience at the Politecnico and yours individually, and we continue in this imagine the work also declined, if you will, to the cities that act as innovation, as pulsating engines.

Guido Saracco: Yes, thank you. I refer to stimuli that came from Antonio, just now, and that also concern, as you said, my own person. I published, in June 2023, a book with a philosopher who is Maurizio Ferrari, one of the few philosophers who have, as it were, a positivist approach, that is to say, they see technologies as the sublimation of human creativity, which in fact they are. When technologies are developed to assert themselves in society solely according to the logic of profit, clearly the risk, in some cases, is that there will be an increase in inequality and social problems that then have to be corrected. But, in general, without a person who conceives them and is educated to do so, technologies would not exist, so they are necessarily human-related, even Artificial Intelligence. The problem we had at the Politecnico (and at the Politecnico di Milano they have been taking the same steps for some time now) is that if I continued to train my engineers as we have done for 160 years, since we were born in 1859, I would have done a disservice to society and to what businesses need today. Because we were, I think, wrong to a certain extent – but on the other hand we were already navigating by sight after the economic boom that saw our country explode and become the fifth world power economically speaking. We responded to the growth of complexity with a growth of skills, of specialisations, we gave birth in the universities to a series of degrees that, dare I say it, formed very vertical professionals, but which were not even capable of communicating with each other much. That is to say, they did not cultivate the philosophy that is mainly expressed in universities like ours, in technology, in the ethics of technology, they did not cultivate a correct view of the world, which is a complex system into which technologies were entering. That is to say, they were not able to understand well the social problems, to which they were providing a solution with an effective product, an effective service, but neither were they able to understand the implications that those technologies could give birth to once introduced into society, in a system that today even crosses 17 sustainable development objectives – sometimes something that is good for one direction, on another produces bad effects. To do this with a radical change in our educational offerings, with the introduction of the Sciences of Society, Philosophy, Sociology, Economics, Law to give a few examples, even Political Science because that blessed triple helix that we are now finally, after so many years, managing to implement, with the universities coming out of their shells and the companies the same (because they have to be in the market anyway) politics, a little more with difficulty – and in politics there are many followers and few leaders at the moment – then, we are coming together. And of course we have to do something different than before, because once upon a time, when Fiat carried the economy forward in this city (it made Turin explode until it became a metropolis of 1.2 million inhabitants in 1974, now there are 850,000), it had a dominant role in the economic dynamics; politics modulated society to rebalance it, and we were only asked: ‘make engineers’, as we say in our parts, ‘cut with a sickle’. The engineer who came out of us was a nerd at most, totally unsuitable to enter the world of work right away. He had enormous potential but he had to spend two years not in small and medium-sized companies (he didn’t trust them and they didn’t trust this head engineer to solve problems day by day). In most cases, these engineers went to the big companies, which were able to take them around the world for a couple of years, after which they had finally understood how the world worked, they had enriched themselves with that social, economic, even philosophical-managerial dimension of how companies work. So today we have made this great transformation. You spoke of interdisciplinarity; interdisciplinarity has become an extended feature in all engineering degrees, it already was in architecture, but for architecture, building around man and communities was easier, they already had the social sciences in them; we introduced them with courses, we introduced modules of grand challenges, i.e., in the second year after a first year of hard sciences, you let the students breathe; 3500 engineers and architects working in groups, no more than six people per group, inspired by a technologist analyst to tackle a grand global challenge: global warming, water and raw materials, the reduction of social inequalities, the health of the future, an ageing population; there are six proposals each year, experts from the two souls of our cultural heritage arrive, the more scientific technological one the more humanistic one, and they begin to think in groups, keeping creativity alive, keeping the critical sense alive, beginning to learn how to communicate as well. Then at the Magistralis you get to do the Challenges, a company comes along, throws you a challenge of innovation, you work in a group with almost trained professionals; again, you work as we work in companies today. You don’t shut yourself away like you used to in the mechanical engineering department of Fiat, all making drawings on the drafting board, in the economics department; now you work in open space. In this way, we keep creativity alive, which is essential, we mature critical sense and soft skills, and we make engineers who are more ‘plug and play’ and who are therefore also able, by summing up a bit of all these disciplines in themselves, to go into a small medium-sized company and give it a shot in the arm there. Often, instead of forming a start-up, you can do something on an already formed start-up that needs innovation. This is our great hope and what we have done over the years, and I am happy to be able to say that the new rector is totally in continuity with this – this is always very important – and many of the things that we have achieved are in tune, but above all, those that we have sketched out will be realised here in Turin, which becomes a laboratory. You will remember Sinatra’s song, ‘If you can make it there you make it anywhere’: Turin is really in difficulty, but it is pulling itself together and is trying to get its act together in terms of culture, tourism, but above all in terms of that great manufacturing vocation that needs collaboration with universities of research centres and has so much potential to redefine itself in different keys from those in which Fiat dominated. Thank you.

Benedetta Cosmi: I met a lot of business angels there, so it is a vocation that seems interesting to me, which precisely discovers the start-ups in the three years after, when they have survived; it is true that there is a great death, but there are those that then need to become bigger still, and so they do so also thanks to that kind of intuition and also human capital that is made available by the managerial skills of entrepreneurs, etc. Now we come to a very interesting part, with you, Francesco Cacopardi, director of the Luigi Gatti Institute Study Centre of Apa Confartigianato imprese Milano Monza e Brianza, which couldn’t have been a better week because we are all buzzing in anticipation of the Furniture Fair, so a little while ago you mentioned, with regard to exports, Made in Italy linked to furniture. However, you really do have so many companies in so many areas: from the particular laundry – your president told me that he tries to put humanity and added value into it – to those marvels that we know are certainly another idea (one could mention a company instead with a K, regarding the idea of a furniture factory) that is linked to materials that are often even more valuable, and that is the unit of measurement that Antonio Calabrò used to say, that is to make to measure. Certainly your field is one of those that more than others is based precisely on the concept of making-to-measure, being a made-to-measure service. I would like with you to break down some of those stereotypes and also those difficulties in communicating, to know how your small businesses are innovating, but which nevertheless make the company great, and above all that we meet every day in our daily lives, I mean, it is impossible not to meet one of your companies in our daily lives, fortunately. And so, thank you for being here, for giving us this contribution in a form of representation, which – I am a great believer in intermediate bodies – I consider particularly important, because bringing together so many individualisms is the leap that the country also needs, to try to make them feel that they belong to something bigger than their already beloved, small business reality.

Francesco Cacopardi: Thank you, Benedetta. I’ll start with this last suggestion. There isn’t a time when I go to a restaurant, to the gym, to the office, when I don’t tell my friends ‘Ah this one does tizio, this one does Caio, this one does Sempronio’, so I can immediately place all the objects that decorate a given context, a given place. This is precisely the characteristic of Artisanal Intelligence, as this felicitous slogan says, which obviously takes up AI by relaunching it on a datum of reality that is typically Italian. I will not repeat concepts that those who have preceded me have expressed in a very timely and precise manner, and which we share 100%. There is a first aspect of overcoming that, how shall we say, alternative position of placing the small as the enemy of the large and vice versa. There is a somewhat conflicting vision of society with a theory, including economic theory, that challenges the Italian system from morning to night, saying that it is too small, too fragmented, too distributed, and therefore it is necessary to make or force aggregations that are then punctually belied by reality; and vice versa, claimant or exaggeratedly unionised attitudes of our world, which in some way see the enemy in big business. There was a book, a few years ago, that said: ‘fleas are strong and no longer need elephants’, as Charles Sandy in the United States quoted this suggestion, linked to the novelty broken somewhat by the new technologies that are highly distributed; it was linked to rapid prototyping rather than to the whole world of 3D printers and in which he dreamed of a world where he overcame that traditional triangle of relations between the designer, the producer and the consumer, which can coincide in a single figure. Let’s say that reality has systematically disproved all these exaggerations, without in any way detracting from the goodness that each little intuition obviously brought into play. I believe, in fact, that the first element is precisely this, that is, the small; every large one brings with it a supply chain and in every supply chain there is a small one that in some way, if it is well positioned, gives, how shall we say the sense, the meaning, the direction to the entire supply chain, and this is the typicality precisely of Italy. Therefore, a system of small and very small enterprises, but positioned in the right places of the large supply chains. So, on the front, there is no Italian brand, the second and third certainly are. Where does this creativity, this intelligence find, as it were, its development in knowledge capitalism? It finds it, as Professor Calabrò said earlier, in a territory, in a context, where this familiarity between people finds its connective tissue, because at the bar we see each other, or in the various meetings we hold we see each other, we talk to each other, we tell each other, and we pass on what is, in fact, lived knowledge, which is the primary characteristic of our country, and luckily this reality still exists, because it is the only thing, perhaps one of the few, that allows us to resist the big investors coming from China, the States or other areas. Here, in this strength I believe there is the first component. The remarks of the former Rector of the Polytechnic, precisely about tackling complexity not so much with further fragmentation, but with a sense, a meaning that reconnects the whole, were beautiful. In this sense, I believe our role can be decisive.

A second aspect – and I will go into a bit more detail as Benedetta asked – concerns how this is expressed in the very wide range of enterprises. We distinguish small enterprises in three ways. There is a first group that is inside the supply chains in strategic places, which therefore grows, has grown, and has not had moments of crisis even in the worst moments of our recent history, because there was an absolute quality product. The second level, on the other hand, is the intermediate one, which somehow has to decide what to do when it grows up, and this is where a large part of our commitment lies, precisely in order to raise awareness that being an entrepreneur means in some way sitting behind the desk and not always being swallowed up by the work and deadlines of the workshop. I think that is the very logical-technical-entrepreneurial step that makes a workshop leader an entrepreneur. That’s kind of the decisive step. There are so many realities like that, and they are the ones that have that strength that can somehow hook in and develop new scenarios that we have in our sights, ‘thriving in chaos’. I would say. The furniture fair is one of these moments where these realities find the sap and the possibility of being able to relaunch themselves. The 4Ms or 4As, in short, that were mentioned earlier, which are the key points of our country, in fact, find their tip of the iceberg in the furniture sector, bearing in mind, however, that what is often overlooked in the news is that, for there to be a design, there is a world behind it that takes in all the areas. I am obviously more familiar with Brianza, and Brianza has grown because the Brianza System has grown, that is, there was the good carpenter but he also had behind him the manufacturer of machine tools to produce the carpentry object or the furniture piece well, and so in Italy the districts have grown. Rimini without tourism, without a fabric behind it that somehow serves the entire hospitality policy, would not be Rimini, would not be Emilia Romagna. So, the great Italian districts are such precisely to the extent that there is a leading element, but one that carries with it a multiple system, i.e. distributed over several areas and sectors. Here, the furniture fair represents this huge world, which is worth about half of the year’s turnover, because it is precisely on that occasion that one is confronted with the big buyers. Here, one of the great stereotypes that has to be eradicated, which foreign delegations do not understand when they come to our country, is that of imagining small business as the activity of the expert, of the guy who is ticking off the piece of wood at the market and selling the second-rate object. In short, there is also this component, but for us the artistic craftsmanship has its own range, it has its own why, it has its own meaning, but this is not the craftsmanship of our world; it is the very solid, very experienced businesses, where time and knowledge make precisely that difference I mentioned earlier. This young man, who has recently taken over the reins of the company, was just telling me: ‘you see, my father, if you give him a plank, a table, he will immediately tell you whether that table is good or bad because there is the eye, I still don’t have this, even though I have the ability, so I will need two planks to then find the right chair, in short, the perfect one that the big markets or the big players ask us for’. Then there are those who are developing this technology, which is a very banal technology in some ways, though highly innovative (banal in its logic, in its conception, but innovative both in the material and in the technologies that are applied), and which is somewhat linked to all the stone applied in furniture. Here it is, all this absolutely innovative strand that has behind it, however, not the stone as such, but a stone supported by these new all organic resins that allow the object to then have a practicality and an ideal placement. And this, if you like, is a penultimate aspect that I was interested in emphasising, that is, to offer with our realities, even microscopic ones, real places where the great architect finds solutions, because many of us do precisely this final part; that is, the great idea, if it does not then have a technician, an operator, a practical person who in some way reduces it to what it must then become, remains a great idea, beautiful perhaps for writing a book, but not very functional, not very feasible. Which is not to diminish the goodness and greatness of this idea, it simply means having that eye, that applied intelligence – so we can use another terminology besides Craftsman Intelligence, an Applied Intelligence – that has within it that genius that characterises our being a little. Giotto was, after all, a craftsman, so he had a large workshop of collaborators who then produced the great works with him. In this sense, the small and very small(enterprise) becomes a driving force in some ways. I repeat, it does not have the strength to position itself and go out and sell the great kitchen or the great furniture series to an entire market, but in the conception and development part, it certainly plays a decisive and determining role. One last consideration to stay within the right time frame. I would like to highlight that aspect which is the generational transition. Here, this is obviously a fundamental aspect for us. There is objectively a problem of seniority in our entrepreneurship, which has boomed in recent years. The average age of the population has risen, so it is also a natural phenomenon, but objectively there is this conclusion. Periods of crisis, all things considered, simplify this somewhat because obviously, those who have accrued a pension take the opportunity to leave as soon as possible, so as not to squander what they may have put aside in life. And so on this side, as it were, there is an impoverishment, an interruption in the natural transmission of knowledge which, as we said earlier, is decisive for our realities. So this is certainly a critical aspect. The world has changed, the needs have changed, and so one reaches 65 or 70 years of age and says ‘I’m going to travel the world instead of staying in my workshop’, which is absolutely legitimate and important, but this requires places and spaces where one can have this possibility of transfer, where children do not always make and follow the choices of their fathers or mothers. This too, of course, is a right element, but it poses serious problems. Here, this aspect here, in my opinion, is an issue that needs to be studied, to be addressed. Therefore, overcoming the resistance of the father who says ‘I set up the company’, now I’m saying a joke, like Queen Elizabeth with King Charles, to say that he waited a lifetime to become king, and yet he lived for 70 years in his mother’s shadow. Here, many times in companies exactly this happens: so the father ‘knows everything’, and does not allow the son to grow up. Here, this is a critical aspect that must be smoothed out, it must be studied, it must be seen. But above all, the problem arises as to how university study can actually have an impact on the small and very small, because the real risk, where precisely university education is oriented towards the large only, the idea of going to the small imposes, as it were, an idea of being somehow suffocated. This is often an element that breaks this continuity, where instead there is the image of before, that of the engineer who travels the world for two years and then returns; this thing happens many times, so the son rightly seeks his own paths, makes his own experiences and after perhaps a bit of work under a boss decides to return to the company, to take it in hand and at this point transforms it and overturns it as his competence and knowledge allows him to do compared perhaps to the father who worked in a circumscribed environment. These are some of the aspects that we often observe and which require precisely that we confront each other, precisely to see together the possible solutions, which can only be different. The biggest mistake one can make is to close the issue in two or three categories that do not then correspond to the variety and multiplicity of reality. Certainly it is a real, real problem, and in our opinion strategic for the future of our country. I would stop here. Thank you.

Benedetta Cosmi: That’s true. So, with flash times, in this second round I would ask, since we were talking about the university, you.

Guido Saracco: Concisely, I’d like to respond to the solicitation I just received. So what I was saying before, that interdisciplinarity is now a prerequisite for everyone. That is to say, even a small and medium-sized company has to digitalise, it has to be sustainable, it has to have a circular economy, it has to pay attention to energy consumption and CO2, it has to respond to a need in society with a product that it has to evolve, because otherwise it won’t stay on the market. What I was saying earlier about the humanist engineer, the creative engineer – which sounds like an oxymoron but is anything but – because creativity is now played out in teams and brings the engineer out, and will increasingly come out, of our universities, take on a certain interdisciplinary nature within himself that allows him – because certainly a small company cannot hire a philosopher, as large companies do, indeed they hire many, they cannot, how should I put it, hire experts necessarily, it depends a little on the size of IT if it is a metalworking company, rather than environmental sustainability, circular economy, etc. So it is these engineers, who have lost their blinkers and are so vertical that they have no overview, that we have to forget. In my last inauguration of the academic year, which was a kind of theatre opera to condense messages without losing, shall we say, the audience, I spoke about myself, I spoke about what I felt when I graduated in chemical engineering in 1989. It was a quick path, I had the opportunity to have fun in quotes, even to be more or less creative, but on other fronts: we made films, we went to discos and had theme parties; I was inclined, you see, for those studies. But I received 39 job offers, obviously from big companies, mostly; they scared me, because frankly I wasn’t able, I didn’t feel able to be an engineer, and in the end I chose to stay (I also liked teaching a lot) in my shell, to do what I did – a university career, I was 30 years let’s say in the research world, then I started dealing with bigger and bigger structures, until I got to the rectorate. But again I got this wrong, that is, the ‘specialist graduate’ case is reflected in so many, how should I say, disciplines, in which they are pigeonholed and woe betide them, woe betide them, because otherwise you get screwed in the exams, in the competitions, and they become experts in one thing, but frankly, I can tell you, inadequate to teach a profession. For this reason, two things: we did a small school of pedagogy for teachers at the Politecnico so that they would get used to a less transmissive and more discussed didactics and bring in complex problems and make people work in groups and so on, even in their course; secondly, openness to interdisciplinary research, which is the one through which new products are now also made, and the inclusion of those teaching modules I referred to earlier, but there is one I did not mention that I could end my speech with: student teams. At the Politecnico di Torino we have 54 student teams that develop products, services, innovative things year after year, and they mix those that are coming out of the tunnel of the Politecnico with those that are entering it. Everyone brings their own stuff from different disciplines – the potential software engineer, the architect, the designer, the management engineer, the materials engineer, the energy engineer, and so on – all of which combine to develop a hydrogen-powered racing car that goes faster than the previous year or travels further. 54 different things. They are beautiful. Unfortunately, we only have 15 per cent of students who are involved because of mass issues, but you have to go in that direction, because these guys then, at that point, are no longer afraid of the small company that goes on a product and necessarily needs people who are more open-minded, but maybe they will also find that it’s easier there, if you’re worthwhile, to get a satisfaction there, even economically quickly. There’s a huge problem you have, I think the generational problem in Italy, so there’s a real need for these people to come into companies and take over quickly at this time in history. I am doing a little bit of investment funds as an advisor, but this is a ‘theme’ on which there is a lot of capital to go and intercept the quality of our small and medium-sized enterprises: great know-how and competence, but of older people who are necessarily leaving, for biological reasons, the possibility of running a business. So we have heard all these needs and I hope we have done a good job, we will see it in the coming years, we are already starting to see it now with the success of our significant innovation ecosystem, the best public partnership incubator in the world, ESA BIC brought home, our start-ups have increased fivefold in recent years, in other words, a start of an important change is perceptible. I thank you, unfortunately I must leave you and I am very sorry I will not be able to hear Antonio’s second speech. Thank you again.

Benedetta Cosmi: Thank you again. So on these points I am reminded when I interact in boards of directors, now there are SG issues, so sustainability also social sustainability, even if it seems less fashionable than environmental sustainability. I would like to say that perhaps more twinning could be created, for example adopting – as sometimes one adopts a student, one adopts a thesis. Imagine adopting a small company, both start-ups and artisans. That is, if the Welfare that is at the head of large companies is often a Welfare that also collaborates with the territorial Welfare, as well as the corporate Welfare, may include in this ecosystem of yours also the small and enterprises that are there in the area, because this could also give the new generations the impression of not decaying downwards from that point of view, and we know that the greatest demand that is made is in any case linked to Welfare lately, and therefore to certain services, from nursery school to other needs. Therefore, probably when you, Antonio, rightly speak of human capital, and immediately link us to social capital, you speak of communities, I would like to say, why don’t we activate in an institutional manner, in the sense of not a one-off spot, which there are great exceptions, and therefore also great excellences, but a sort of business community that therefore also takes charge of those around it, a bit as if you see these potential shops and therefore we become these cities again, as you might say, renaissance. This, then, could bring together young people, talent, skills, entrepreneurs, but also the engineers we were saying, and thus give back, also making use of that interesting thing that was said about finding solutions. That is, the great architect finds the solution by attending, as in the anecdotes that our Confartigianato representative also told us. So you can create this community of companies where the big one puts the training school at its service, in short, this interaction. Also because the public school, but also the private one in general, risks taking us back to a context of frontal teaching that makes us lose that fresh ability, which instead we felt we had, let’s say, in the shoes of the father, who is probably still at the elementary school leaving certificate, so probably those skills that his son has not yet arrived at would not find them even in a school, he would have to go ‘elbow to elbow’, as they used to say.

Antonio Calabrò: Look, I don’t think it’s a problem of goodwill or even patronage. I believe in it very little. I believe in the system of conveniences and opportunities, starting if you like also semantically from the word ‘competitiveness’, which is made up of two words. The first is cum, which stands for together, and the other is petere, to have a common development project. So, territorial welfare systems, relations between small, medium and large, are within a convergence of economic interests, of economic projects, along supply chains, along supply chains. I believe that reasoning must be done on supply chains and networks. The convenience of the big ones is that the small ones in their supply, the small and medium ones in their supply, for example, are perfectly in line with the logic, values and prescriptions of sustainability, because I must be able to certify my production chain. The markets demand it, much of finance demands it. The responsibility of the big ones is to have a series of stimuli to be able to make all the suppliers, small, large and medium-sized ones that have to do with me, grow, both on the side of transition, of sustainability, both environmental and social, and on the side of digital transition. I cannot have the best of Made in Italy if there are the shadows of the subcontracting underworld, to be explicit.

Benedetta Cosmi: It also seems to be a reference to the very recent but, unfortunately, permanent topicality.

Antonio Calabrò: It is absolutely general. Just as, within my supply chain, I have an extraordinary interest in one value, which is safety at work. Now, the data on work safety in the country is not comforting. Here I am thinking of the disaster yesterday in Emilia, and I believe that it is in the interest of small businesses to come out of the perception of the black economy, the perception of irregularities, and not just because there are laws to be respected and values to be upheld. Work is a value, work is a dignity. President of the Republic Mattarella is right when, following in the wake of previous presidents – I am thinking of the things said by Ciampi, Napolitano – he reiterates point by point on work as dignity, on work as safety, on the quality of work and on the safety of work as a fundamental element of the production chain. We make beautiful things that the world likes, safely and transparently: they go together. You cannot have bespoke, quality, design, beauty, innovation if there is an element of death, injury, fracture behind it; and this is a fundamental point that concerns the whole chain. The big ones in this have an extraordinary responsibility. There are big ones – I’m thinking of Vacchi’s Ima, in Emilia, which takes stakes in small companies along its supply chain, because as a shareholder it controls the process. I don’t know if it is the best system, but it is certainly a system of great interest. And in any case, the certification mechanism, even with respect to finance, with respect to the entry of investment funds into the capital, has a lot to do with the certification of quality, of compliance with SG principles, which concern the environment, which concern social data, which concern governance. This is a governance issue, the governance of the supply chain, whose responsibility lies with the big guys. The second point I would like to make, and I will close, has to do with the generational transition, which is a very complex issue. I know very well how, for those who have founded a business, that business is an essential part of themselves, it is a fundamental piece of their identity, and this is a huge advantage of family capitalism with a sense of history. Managerial capitalism is quick: you get into the company, you make paths, you get out: it’s not mine. Family capitalism looks at long-term projects throughout history. The best that this country can express is the grafting of family shareholder capitalism with managerial management skills, which are put in place by taking them where the market offers.

Benedetta Cosmi: What examples can you cite?

Antonio Calabrò: A long series of companies. Zambon pharmaceuticals, to name but one, but I could list an infinity. I know that this issue of managerial skills is an open problem for artisan companies and for small and very small ones. You could think of consortium managerial skills figures: the export manager for 10 companies in the same territory.

Benedetta Cosmi: Are there any examples already real or are we still at the proposal stage?

Antonio Calabrò: There are many examples of this kind in the productive territories, not very many, but it is a figure that is moving forward. The same Brianza of the small and very small furniture subcontracting companies, where there are not only wood and plastic products, but there are, for example, hinges. The Brianza metalworking industry keeps the furniture industry on its feet. I have to be able to open a door: that metalmechanical skill also has an element of beauty, our hinges are functional and beautiful, more beautiful than the German ones, often as functional as the German ones. In short, shared export managers, but also sustainability managers, but also so on and so forth, that is, you have to think of small businesses, which on the founder’s side are closed worlds (mine, protected), as open structures. Because being an open structure, having an open culture, allows for example a fundamental operation: the generational handover needs training, and it needs finance. Otherwise, the company does not change hands, even partially, it does not transform, it does not have the capital to be able to liquidate the family members who would gladly leave, because they do other jobs, they are a doctor or have opened a shop, or are teaching at university, or have a holiday village or are employed in another reality. The partners must be able to be liquidated. The entry of finance into small businesses, even small craft businesses, needs to have, however, an open culture, of dialectics, of confrontation, of transparency on the part of the entrepreneur, of the founding entrepreneur. These are the issues we have before us. I believe that reasoning about industrial policy does not only mean reasoning about taxation, it also means reasoning about business culture.

Benedetta Cosmi: That would already be a good title. I like the fact that it is also partly a self-criticism, in the sense that sometimes it seems as if you have accepted being thrown into that role and then called upon to give a proposal, an answer; you position yourself and almost die on that one aspect, while all the others remain open. So, let’s close with you briefly, we can say that today, with a provocation, it is easier to become a doctor than to become, I don’t know, a carpenter or even other names that I also find difficult to find in the huge world that you represent and study. This is because in training, the process of becoming a doctor is clearer to us – with all the limitations, the difficulties, and we have also seen the issue of the transition from faculty to specialisation, hence the block that there has been for years and that we are now paying for in terms of a shortage of health personnel – but the difficulty of becoming, I don’t know, a carpenter, is enormous because in which school should I apply? In which territory is that school? There was an italic of mine in the Corriere that said ‘Study Greek and carpentry’. Obviously, today, in Italy it is impossible. To you, Francesco.

Francesco Cacopardi: There are a few small exceptions, so you can study Greek with carpentry. A headmaster, who then unfortunately died, had recently set up this network of professional woodworking schools, there are 22 left in Italy, and then there are many local realities; in Brianza we have three of these realities. The problem there, however, is vocations, i.e., people do not enrol, so there is a problem of culture to explain to families that it is worth betting on jobs where one perhaps realises one’s talents and gifts, perhaps one is happier because one does not have to sit behind a desk all day, so this is a cultural problem. I always say that we need to invent a TV show because the Masterchef of the situation has cleared customs for the job of cook, which was previously outcast and has become a Cult of our country. Here, if we can also find some programmes on carpentry, mechanics, etc., that would be a hit. I’m giving this to you as a suggestion, Benedetta, that you deal with communication. I would only take up two things. The first, your question on the export manager, as the professor suggested earlier; here are the examples on this, we are very much in favour of network contracts, they are new instruments, relatively new because they have been around for a few years now, but in my opinion they combine those two aspects that I suggested earlier, i.e. the natural reluctance to be an employee typical of the self-employed – he is self-employed precisely because he has an impetus of freedom that he wants to defend at all costs, so naturally individualistic from this point of view because otherwise he would do another job. Therefore, putting several heads together is always critical; to the extent, however, that I make the collective interest prevail (obviously no one is stupid knowing that by putting together you acquire orders that you would not otherwise take home, trivially), therefore by putting together several subjects with precise objectives and goals, where however each one continues to have his autonomy guaranteed, in my opinion these are just systems, which combine and find the right balance between these two needs: autonomy and, at the same time, the advantages of economies of scale and system. In this sense, the export manager that you mentioned can indeed be financed, and networks from this point of view there are many of them, they have grown, and I believe that it is a direction if – and here you will allow me a bad joke – the state leaves it be, does not get in the way to further stiffen this dynamic, by reducing it to what consortia are, for example, which have their genesis from this point of view, but which then become congealed and have a very quick duration, because they last the time to take the order, but then once the order is reached they start fighting again, so the average duration is 3-4 years. After that the consortia blow up, because there is this too rigid dynamic. Here I would like to make a second observation, which relates to the scenarios mentioned on which the next challenges will be played out. The European Union was mentioned; here in my opinion there is an idea of being able to create a perfect system with perfect rules. That is, the assumption that if I have a certified system then at the various levels, so I take it as a general statement, then somehow, automatically, the whole system works. Here I have many perplexities, many doubts about this approach. If we are also going to deal with Artificial Intelligence, a small analogy could be the difference between Artificial Intelligence and Robotic Process Automation, the so-called RPA, they are two totally different worlds, because one works on the automation of human actions – Italy is a leader because we are third in Europe on these applications – Artificial Intelligence, on the other hand, which is applied on the functioning and simulates the functioning of the brain assumes a decidedly different advance, but its limitation is that it must be perfect in its conception, in its construction. But probably the crisis of 2009 must be a consequence of some algorithm in which certain categories or possibilities were in fact unforeseen. I believe that now, giving this small image that may perhaps be useful, in the first sphere we play our game precisely as a system, on that characteristic that is therefore capable of moving because, as it were, it takes everything, that is, it is capable of absorbing everything without having to regiment this everything, it takes it in its forms, in its ways, in its very creative, different ways, of environment, of language, of techniques, of applications, and in some way it gives it a finalised order. This, I believe, is precisely the Italian typicality, that of the symphony, rather than the mass. The symphony, where each artist does his piece, does it well, there is a good maestro who puts everything together to make a harmonious system. This I believe is the role, it has to start from the bottom not from the top, I am absolutely convinced of that. Starting from the bottom, however, is valued in the right way, I believe it creates those two realities that are typical of our country, well-being and social cohesion. It amazes the foreigner to go to a small company and see the Ferrari in the garage at home, ‘but what’s this story that this guy has a company of five people and has the Ferrari in the garage’. Well, here we have this widespread prosperity that allows precisely this capacity, which stems from this great intelligence of relations and relationships and of targeting the objectives that are then of interest to everyone. I might add one last line on miniaturisation, where it is difficult to dialogue with the university, because it is clear that if I have as a customer the Ima mentioned earlier, I obviously have a staff and a team that can work on several fronts and with even more substantial investments. The small one does not have this strength, but it has the same need, because even the small one, working in the supply chain, requires very high specialisation. Then, obviously, size does not coincide with the investment that is necessary to have this very high degree of specialisation, but if we find the key that allows and makes this aspect economically interesting, this can really generate a great boost to that renewal of our production fabric that is required. I have seen very interesting experiences here, from the Metalmechanics company that specialises in large dimensions, since the market in that area was not pulling, it started to make dentures, so the same technology applied to the large I applied to the small, and I became a leader in the small, that is, I miniaturised what I got from the large. I think this is a good frontier, as, conversely, is the dialogue between different sectors. I remember this network contract made by these furniture companies, which we combined for more regulatory reasons, i.e., there was funding to be taken, at the last moment a partner was missing, we took this one who was concerned with building racetracks around Europe, and here the combination created The Sheikh’s Stables, which are sold at stratospheric prices, perfectly in line with a luxury hotel, so if normally one goes into the stable with dirty boots, here one walks on marble. These are the little possibilities that, in my opinion, this dynamic introduces.

Benedetta Cosmi: Good. I really like the expression I would like to summarise as ‘the key to the need’. In the world of work, where we talk about demand, supply, mismatch, etc., the key of need can be the turning point. So I wish you a happy Salone del Mobile, and also a happy Fuori Salone with this caveat: in the last year we had begun to worry because it was becoming more of a spectacle, the message of the many people queuing to get in, entering to watch had not appealed to me last year; apart from the inconvenience, the chaos that is created in the city, but that feeling of belonging to a productive world is lost. The city of Milan lends itself very well to being the city of work, I would not like it to become the city, instead, of the hit-and-run, of those who come to see as if it were a banal Coliseum today in Rome, and tomorrow the Furniture Fair in Milan, because they would risk losing this very networking opportunity that you have, with these suggestions, made us savour.

Instead, I would like it to become a place where perhaps even young, potential new talents could come and meet the many companies in this supply chain that have contributed to creating these beautiful objects, which will be present, exhibited, and in short will enrich and enliven our city a bit, precisely by trying to learn new trades. Maybe they will discover that they can be part of, as you say; sometimes the product that is to be made doesn’t even exist yet, you mentioned one where they invented it, so here, come and attend Salone, Fuori Salone, again as active participants in the world of work, not just like going to the cinema to see a film. I hope you agree too; in short, good show, in a certain sense, but on the other, thanks to those who will do it, to those who will be able to find new stimuli from this new, and by now imminent, edition. Thank you for participating, for contributing to the debate, to the Workshop. We also thank those who have followed us so far. Thank you again, and good work.