Human capital: places and values training the executive classes (27/05/2021
Ricceri: I thank our distinguished guests on behalf of the Eurispes and President Fara. The theme you have chosen, relating to the places and values that form the executive classes, represents a real challenge. First of all, because today, we must operate under that new reality that is sustainability, and we must do it by building a completely different model, which passes from quantity to quality. In the current society, we must necessarily measure it with the so-called “megatrends”, with globalisation, the digital revolution, the climate, demographic changes, etc. The introductory reflection that allows me to do is the following: we are working on our society as a communication, information and knowledge one. The government’s reconstruction plan focuses on building connections between the world of university and that of industry. The primary mission is to address research into the companies. As a stimulus to the discussion, the question is, therefore, does this vision really helps to enter a new scenario? We are preparing young people to get into new forms of work, and the question in the debates, even at an international level, is whether we are preparing them for the future or not and, finally, what idea of the future we have. We are witnessing an incredible impoverishment of valid studio centres operating on the strategy. Also, through social studies – like the Italy Report that we produce every year – we immediately realise that people in a crisis phase, like that brought by the pandemic, restricted their future prospects, young people think the medium-short term, nobody does projects anymore. So, on the one hand, we feel the need to build an idea of the future. On the other, however, we realise that people are increasingly closed in themselves. A reorganisation of appropriate places could fill this gap that is at the same time frightening. I agree on creating a bridge between universities and the labour market, but there is a need for something more than strategies.
Cosmi: Yes, also because forming the ruling classes without a context of reference still risks making them weak. From an individual point of view, lifelong learning is fundamental, but who and what operates around it? I leave the floor to General Giancotti to understand how the State is structured to have figures (and therefore a human capital development) prepared and trained in a recognised and fundamental strategic asset.
Giancotti: Thank you very much for the invitation and greetings to the speakers. It is no coincidence that we share a strong interest in these issues, so much so that next month will be held three days just on the subject relating to the construction of the management for defence and, more generally, for the Country. It is just as a resilience tool and a total capacity of the system, which is also relevant in terms of safety. The armed forces have had a structured method of continuing education and, in particular, in recent decades, this ability has grown and is structured quite well. We saw the effect of this investment, I must say. What happened recently is that this good, traditional training had a radical transformation, a fundamental change of program that has crossed this Centre for Research, but not only. The defence has established the need, as emerged from concrete operations and the interaction with the ground, of a new cultural model for our military leadership. Therefore, It was much more agile, more capable of facing uncertain, volatile, ambiguous environments. Starting from this point, we focused the attention on innovation. Not surprisingly, in July 2019, the first level II Master was launched in “Leadership Change Management & Digital Innovation”, conducted with completely innovative methodologies approaches. This content was then incorporated into the regular centre courses to add innovation training to traditional training. We also tried to redefine the centre from the point of view of internal processes to adapt it to this ability to innovate the training itself permanently. We are currently digging the entire centre in a very incisive way, especially from the teaching point of view, and we have succeeded in creating a network of relationships and collaborations able to link to a civil society with increasing intensity. Here at the centre, we form the strategic leadership of all defence, and we are focusing on transmitting not only the ability to read strategic and geopolitical contexts in general but also to think in a properly strategic and innovative way. This effort paid off because it has significant motivational and methodologic implications, and the participation of students in concrete defence projects is solid. We have learned from the experience that you cannot act in an isolated manner, especially in training, because you risk losing that enrichment that results from exchanges and the same network concept of the hub is at the centre of the new Configuration we are trying to achieve. But above all, there is no fundamental system effect to overcome the additional challenges that, to date, intervened in our Country. Collective action, to be effective, must be based on a common identity and shared values. Leadership is responsible for promoting this identity and this cohesion, and this is realised around the importance. For us, men of armed forces, the values are something very structured. They educate us on these values from a very young age and during our careers.
But most importantly, we live them daily in the value of the service. Therefore, a clear redefinition of the need to create identities around common values is certainly fundamental because these values are central not only for the military but also for everyone. Beyond the many particularisms, there is increasing attention to this aspect, and I am happy about it.
Cosmi: Giovanni, how did you see a country change or, other times, restrain?
Giovanni Farese: thank you for the invitation. I resume a reflection of the Secretary-General Ricceri, hence that our ability to project us towards the future actually depends on our ability to immerse ourselves in the past. Places and values are absolutely together. A ruling class worthy of this name has always formed history to have culture, the amplitude of horizons, imagination. It is often said that there are no institutions in Italy. People are essential, but what is lacking is precisely the institutions (public and private) and their culture, namely the meaning and structures of the institutions’ continuity, which is impossible to build without historical conscience. I think it’s important for an institution to answer the following questions: Do you have an archive? Do you have a library? Do you have the worship of your history? Do their workers know that history? The profound essence of an institution passes through these questions, and what can lead to those who work in such contexts possess the history of that reality. Historical consciousness is therefore fundamental for institutions and to build the structures of the continuity I spoke. The value is essentially this, something that must last. Otherwise, that value will deplete over time. Towards the end of his life, Raffaele Mattioli thought (and he also wrote the Statute) to an institution for studying the ruling class in Italy, which brings us back to the issues we are talking about today. I recently found a quote of Malagodi that sounds more or less like this: “There is nothing more beautiful than instructing a youngest and eager to progress, but there is nothing more difficult than having to educate with a thousand precautions an elderly that believes he is perfect », this to reconnect myself to the individual training mentioned before. There have been many institutions that have played a fundamental role in our history, such as the Bank of Italy, which gave the Country two presidents of the Republic, two Presidents of the Council (up to this moment), Ministers and international professional figures. Nowadays, it is impossible to think of a ruling class for Italy that does not see an international opening as the main road of our development.
On the other hand, moral integrity is fundamental, practised without advertising, lived without the rhetoric, with a net personal disinterest, and I believe that this aspect was implicit even in the idea of service we referred to before. Another fundamental value for the ruling class is, undoubtedly, courage, which comes from deep convictions. In a context of uncertainty in which all our collective and individual decisions are inscribed, at some point, the data, the facts, the forecasts are not enough, and you have to rely on something more profound than meets a destination, a collective goal, hence a concrete utopia.
Cosmi: what we try to share with our Laboratory is that the best of people, the best of human capital, has not already been, so that sense of nostalgia often you hear is not meant to be. It is just up to us to continue to work in this direction and do not stop it. This work must also be carried out in a context like universities. This is what Gianmario Verona, Rector of Bocconi, is going to speak about.
Gianmario Verona: Thank you for inviting me. History is indeed a teacher of life. In this sense, the history of the twentieth century can be helpful at this time, since this pandemic has been assimilated several times at war and it was at the end of the war, thanks the Marshall plan, we could revive ourselves, becoming an economic and political power at a global level. Today we recover the opportunity – thanks to the PNRR that is objectively something moistful and historical – to perform a similar action. We stayed for a year and a half stuck at home, and we are coming from a very complex economic-political situation. Regardless of the pandemic, the world was moving to new horizons, and paradoxically this tragedy can provide us with a new way to question ourselves. Europe will guarantee Italy more than 200 billion; if Italy sticks to this plan, they are a considerable amount, even compared to the requests made by other states, so we will really have the opportunity to do something extraordinary. To do this, however, firstly, there are challenges to deal with the human capital, starting with a challenge of content, which I see well expressed in the plan and concerning the current historical moment.
We are experiencing the fourth industrial revolution, and I say with a certain regret that our companies pretended that digital did not exist. Our politics experienced it, significantly the posts on Facebook, but digital is the fourth industrial revolution. Therefore it is necessary to reorganise industrial and organisational processes within the company, which is very complicated. It is good that the armed forces first follow a new formation of the ruling class in terms of digitalisation and sustainability because it means that this change is already in place. We must try to re-evaluate the skills. To do so, training is essential and must cover all ranks of people who have been in the labour market for years and who must get an update from a skills point of view. Some people don’t have time to return to study for sure, and this kind of training seems to me still quite missing in our Country. At Bocconi we are lucky enough to have a very active school. However, in Italy, training schools are not a lot, and there must be a systematic appeal to hold back the skills of those already in the labour market. This challenge to update human capital concerns universities and future generations: the reform to be done on the school is a decisive reform. The school must also be able to give other stimuli, learn a little of law, the minimum bases of the economy, practical elements that are very important in everyday life. Compared to Germany and other countries, our penalty is precisely linked to this inability to introduce younger boys in the labour market that does not have a university education but may fulfil essential executive jobs. From my point of view, the PNRR is extraordinary. It has a long premise, which is the chapter on reforms. If this chapter is realised, the PNRR will be a new Marshall Plan, and Italy will play a competitive role for the next 20 years; If those reforms will probably not be made, Europe will not even give us money; if things are done in a “naughty way” – as we are often usual doing in Italian politics – we will probably have the money, but they will get us anywhere.
Cosmi: if it depended on you, what line would it take to redesign the ruling class selection process?
Gianmario Verona: I start from the assumption that important reforms have been written, although they are not detailed, they are potentially important, and we have a great minister of education and a great minister of the university, a colleague that I got to know because we were both Rectors at the same moment. Professor Messa is the right person in the right place. From this point of view, we must have the courage to implement them, even without listening to political rumours that tend to “ripped” these reforms and transform them into something very different from what they were previously planned. I believe it is essential to have a step change, especially concerning the university sector reform, which is increasingly self-referential and detached from international competitors, who now have a rather significant speed. The “brain drain” theme is evident from the numerical and empirical point of view in the academic world. Therefore, this reform must not be a consensus kind of reform but must be one led by an international benchmark, which showed what works and what it doesn’t and must then be implemented with courage that requires a kind of innovation of this type.
Ricceri: I wanted to take the opportunity of the presence of these illustrious speakers to deepen a point: in the strategy of sustainability and agenda 2030 there is a key pass continuously repeated by international bodies, from the OECD, from the same European Union, namely that to overcome, in the world of scientific research and education, the organisation by storage bins, – where the law professor act in a compartmentalised world, does not speak with the economist, with the sociologist, with the anthropologist etc. -, to initiate interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary experiences. It would be interesting to understand that you are on the border of research activity if you have this type of goal on the agenda and possibly organising it. It is essential. It means not only preparing young people at work to be job-ready, but also to be future-ready; hence to be ready for interdisciplinary work that allows you to approach complexity and also try to obtain ends. The rector is right on the government program because a director who worked at the Presidency of the Council has come to us to stress out that the last planning for Italy dates back to the mid-seventies. This is the first time the Italian government makes a reconstruction plan for 2026/2030. Therefore, we have an interval of almost forty years, over forty years. The other point is how to overcome this compartmentalised system and promote interdisciplinary collaboration.
Cosmi: Furthermore, in school, among other places, is the example that mentioned the rector: those pointing on the classical studies then do not speak of economics, law and so on.
Ricceri: one of the most evident topics that emerged with the industrial revolution: how to regulate the robot, the artificial intelligence if it does not enter the ethical world, in the financial world, or in anthropology? We need this intertwining, and this also applies to security problems because many tensions are born outside the specific military context.
Verona: This is one of the challenges, the reorganisation of knowledge. I always mention this paradox concerning the Anglo-Saxon world – some love it and others don’t, and there are often polemics in newspapers, including national ones, on the importance of a classical culture rather than a culture linked to pragmatism, typical of Anglo-Saxon countries – because at the end of the day, if you look at the academic and industrial positions in these countries, you have to ask yourself some questions. One of the differential characteristics that we have, especially in Italy, not necessarily in Europe, but certainly in Italy, is to force, as Benedetta Cosmi correctly reminded us, a girl to decide, at thirteen, if she becomes more humanist or if she becomes more linked to the world of science, to force a girl or a boy of eighteen to become a lawyer, or a doctor or an engineer or a pilot and so on. This is a paradox because in the Anglo-Saxon world, it is a choice that is made after at least three years of university where, first of all, there are not these logical categories at the high school level; there is indeed, also a solid orientation towards more practical disciplines and then the first two or three years of the so-called bachelor’s degree. Therefore, the first years of university are generalist and allow people to get passionate: I can take a course in physics and follow one in musicology, for example. That is in particular to guarantee that combination that has been rightly mentioned before of the paradox of the robot that doesn’t understand ethics and, consequently, when we have to program the self-driving car, we don’t know whether it will have an accident and what kind of damage it will cause because it takes a professor of moral philosophy to do that. So this problem of not bringing knowledge together is devastating. I will tell you this anecdote: when I wanted to introduce the Computer Science course into all the Bocconi programmes – we have law, political science, economics, management – at ministerial level, they would not allow me to do so because to do so would have taken credits away from a subject linked to these four major blocks that characterise Bocconi degrees, which would have led to the title of political science, law, etc. being taken away. So, I forced the curriculum by forcing students to take an extra course. Fortunately, the rector at Bocconi is not elected but appointed, so I didn’t have the problem of negotiating this with the students, but we felt in Bocconi governance that it was the right thing to do. This is paradoxical. It’s just a small example that I like to give to illustrate something that the current Minister knows very well and is trying to change, moving simply towards the so-called European IRSI areas. These research areas do not ‘split’ the economy into twenty branches but talk about economics. It would already be a great advantage, a very important development, because bringing together knowledge is fundamental; clearly, specialisation must be accurate, paying attention to the fact that it is not a question of knowing a little about many things, but nothing in-depth. Specialisation must be acquired, but it must be acquired over time, it must not be forced, because it creates great frustration and unemployment. This is also linked to the fact that young people, perhaps, wanted to be lawyers and realise that when they are already twenty-one years old, they no longer wish to be lawyers and must graduate by force, and then they find it challenging to find a job in the end. And this is a huge mistake that we have within the system.
Cosmi: Exactly, I call it the imposition of the “out-out” instead of the flexible mix, which is what people want. Imagine in our area, in Lombardy, with the Salone del Mobile. What is the actual educational background of those who are passionate about that sector? There is no real study because there is nothing that can simultaneously reconcile carpentry, economics, marketing, the environment, gardening, etc. I believe, however, that the time is ripe because this interdisciplinary approach appeals to the student, the Rector and the Minister.It’s hard to understand who is holding back change at this point.
Giancotti: This issue is very close to my heart because our focus is precisely on the capacity for strategic leadership, i.e. understanding at a strategic level and acting accordingly, creating effects at a strategic level. A compartmentalised culture does not train on this aspect, not at forty or forty-five years of age. It is something that has to be checked early on, and it is the reason why we have been pushed by the pressure of events, of history, to redesign our curricula. When I was Academy Commander, I was a direct protagonist of this: we moved to the Engineering Department, but we designed a very strong, vigorous, multidisciplinary degree with the then Rector Gaetano Manfredi and, nevertheless, broad and responsive to various needs. Then we do our specialisations because once we leave the Academy, we have to operate highly sophisticated weapon systems such as the F35 and the Eurofighter, and there you really have to go deep, ‘inside’ that specialisation area, but you do it with an understanding, let’s say at least initially, of the structural, system-level, and when you get to the strategic level, it is obviously even more necessary. But it develops on – let’s say – already opposite bases. I have been teaching for eight years now in a degree course at the Department of Economics at Tor Vergata called Global Governance, which is precisely built this way. I can say that after so many years, the results are truly incredible, especially in terms of the ability of these young people. I am not saying this because the rankings say so, but because I can see the clear difference between those who come out of this educational course and all the others. It is a three-year degree, and tomorrow, with Ambassador Massolo, we will present the Master’s degree.
Cosmi: In which way is this difference noticeable?
Giancotti: In two respects: firstly, the approach to problem-solving, to managing problems and challenges, and then motivation. It’s a very engaging type of course, where there’s a lot of care for the students. I can’t say how now, but there’s a lot of care for the students. There is rigour – just yesterday we had a disciplinary board for four students – but also a lot of attention to cultural investment, even transdisciplinary because there are initiatives of this kind, it creates motivational cycles, motivational hypercycles, so that the students are much more motivated, much more motivated. They are part of an overall dynamic of this kind, which is based on different disciplines, but which is also a process of leadership, or should I say, transversal, connecting them.
Cosmi: We thank you and wish you all the best for the next challenge. Thank you for this contribution and for reminding us what makes a helpful course. Giancotti: Thank you, I am truly honoured and thank you for this opportunity to listen. Ricceri: General, do you have interdisciplinary working groups, for example, Global Governance, which brings together lawyers, economists, sociologists, etc.? Giancotti: That’s an excellent question. There are different subjects, and then there are cross-linking events. We are working to increase the synergy between the issues. For example, this summer, there will be a transdisciplinary symposium (Global Governance Symposium) which will link all the disciplines on specific themes chosen by the students, and there are international speakers who will come to talk about this. This course is also looking at greater integration between subjects but leaving the individual disciplines’ identity because that also becomes important as an accumulator of skills and knowledge.
Cosmi: We are continuing in this vein. What is it that made it possible in the past to leave such an evident trace of the presence of those institutions, of those people, that today is in danger of not happening? Is it because of the speed with which things change, names, acronyms, images and roles? Or, perhaps, because they have remained, for so many years, in the same position, unchanged, unchanging, and this has in some way strengthened them? A bit like the singers who now seem to be meteors, living in reflected light for a very short time, the media talks about nothing but them, and then from one moment to the next they disappear, while the names of the same singers who lived in those same cultural epochs we were talking about remain intergenerational. What is it? I now pass you over to Giovanni, asking him, what do you think put us at risk of depriving us of our future? Is it the big names, the big institutions – which you rightly called ‘the system effect’?
Giovanni Farese: I’ll mention two of them, but there are many more: the first is autonomy and independence of judgement. I mean, above all, autonomy from party politics. If we think of the institutions I mentioned, the history there was of a specific type as long as there was autonomy and independence of judgement. It was different in a subsequent phase, which is true for many other institutions, big banks, companies, universities. The second is what I was saying earlier, the sense of continuity, i.e. consistency and basic vision. People may change, but an institution maintains coherence, an essential image. This is what a ruling class expresses, which has been somewhat lost in government activity, in short, in the fundamental choices of recent decades, which have been made, undone and then redone by the majority in office. I wanted to return to two things Prof. Verona said, with which I totally agree with. Firstly, the objectives. Perhaps for the first time since the end of the Second World War, we are deciding on goals and objectives, i.e. what kind of society we want; These two significant transitions, the ecological-inclusive transition – because there is also an element of social inclusion in the ecological transition – and the digital-technological transition set, for the first time, goals and targets that are not left to automatisms, or to spontaneities, which are not only those of the market but can also be those of excessively rigid rules. Will we succeed in achieving them? Will we not succeed? This is important, of course, but I am interested above all in this fundamental change; that is, once again, we are setting goals. The second thing is about the meeting and integration of knowledge. For some time, we have been telling ourselves the story, which is mainly true, that the humanistic culture dominated over the others, but this is not our story. If we go back to Humanism and the Renaissance, how can we say that Leonardo da Vinci was a great man of letters or a great scientist? And so for many others. I can teach literature by reading Leonardo da Vinci’s Aphorisms, and I can study science by reading a story by Italo Calvino or Carlo Emilio Gadda, who was an engineer. This integration is part of our history. In a certain sense, we must go back to where we were without being nostalgic, as you said, but recovering those elements that can usefully project us into a future that will be different in which this integration is fundamental.
Cosmi: To those who listen to us, where do you invite them to go? On the subject of archives and the questions you asked at the beginning – you were asking if there is an archive, if there is a library, I’m thinking of school libraries and the schools that have them represent a cultural promotion of a certain kind that is fundamental, a rapprochement also with the idea that school is something more than simply being a notion and, therefore, it is also education to go to places. So what are these places you invite people to? Two years ago, there was a controversy about the New York library, which is public, beautiful, very popular, and even actors came to defend it. I don’t think something similar would happen here because there isn’t even a library that is so popular, loved and lived in. So where would you send them? And how do you access them, because sometimes you need a lot of patience, I must say, to access Italian libraries and archives.
Giovanni Farese: Today, there is a whole field called Digital Humanities that also concerns the digitisation of archives, so there should not be a fundamental opposition between these two worlds. Certainly, as you say, the beauty of libraries, let’s say interdepartmental or university libraries lies above all in the possibility of exchanging ideas and knowledge for those who study physics, law, medicine, economics, etc. For a young person visiting the library in their school, it is important to know who has been in those same places, draw from them elements of judgment, examples of diagnosis, and interpretation. I think, however, that the conversation we had this afternoon also gave rise to an invitation to go, let’s say, “wherever we like”, in the sense that the imagination and passion we put into things, as well as motivation, emerged as fundamental traits. As the Rector, Professor Verona, said earlier, a great idea can come to a physicist while listening to music, while cultivating his great passions, because that gives him motivation, imagination. It is important to visit these places of our memory, of tradition, such as archives and libraries. And I repeat with the words of a great French historian: ‘those who only want to know the present, end up not even understanding the present’. But, simultaneously, the stimulus that comes from imagination, passion, motivation must be cultivated in a transversal and original way.
Cosmi: Let’s close with Milan, a city that is undoubtedly a driving force, which has had its bad year and which is focusing a lot on the universities, something that has aroused great pride in recent years. Milan didn’t know it was a university city. Still, it discovered itself and began to feel pride, for those who choose it, for those who live there, and therefore all the economic benefits and the ideas, the freshness that represent that world of young people that you frequent and helps to become proper human capital. So from the Milan you speak of, which is perhaps starting up again, what signal can we highlight today in this contribution to places and values?
Verona: I am very optimistic. It was the weekend of 22 February 2020, and I confess that I didn’t sleep for the rest of the three weeks because it seemed that Milan and Lombardy were net exporters of Coronavirus to the world. I thought that unfortunately, the world for our city would stop for a long time. In reality, we then discovered that the pandemic had simply emerged here but had already spread to other countries, perhaps more tacitly. We are making a great start, I believe. As has been said, Milanese universities are younger than Italian universities, they are probably older than many universities around the world, but since Italy invented universities in the year 1000, and since Milanese universities – except for the Milan Polytechnic, which dates back to 1884 – are all 20th-century institutions, we can say that they are actually younger. Essentially, Milan has discovered that it is a university city because we have more than 220,000 students, including some excellent humanities and engineering students. On an economic level, I must say that they are excellent universities. We are becoming more and more of a Campus, as is Bocconi, of course, with its structure in the Porta Romana area where we are, and the rest of the city is becoming more so with the other universities. I have to say that this will be an upswing in the reorganisation as well. We have spoken several times with the Mayor, with the Region, clearly at the centre also human capital, training. The part of Scalo di Porta Romana, which is opposite Bocconi, will probably not only be used as the Olympic village for Milan-Cortina but, in the end, will also be given to university students as a residence. Therefore, it will become a welcoming city that can maintain its competitive advantage in several very important sectors such as finance, design, and the whole world related to fashion.
I’m optimistic, with a proper focus on the importance of the courage we need to have to implement these reforms, because it’s essential to have the courage to change given that there won’t be other opportunities of this nature and given that, I repeat, we will be in structural debt. We were already one of the countries with the highest debt, as you know, after Greece; at this point, with this 160%, we must necessarily grow economically to recover. We have all the qualities that have been well expressed in this debate and mentioned by Prof. Farese. Historically, our Italian intellect is creative because it can work like two legs, it is deep in two fields, and therefore it can truly do extraordinary things. Our industry is the child of great industrialists who has understood this twofold depth. We have the creativity, and we have also learnt how to obtain resources; we need to develop an organisational capacity that we actually lack, even compared to other northern European countries; we need to be a little more adept at being able to respect the rules, to organise ourselves in a less individualistic way and to pay more attention to the community. And this is something we are trying to teach at the university level, too. Indeed, I see that in many universities, there is more and more attention being paid to teach not only content but also the so-called behavioural skills, which are very important. They should also be taught at school because the ability to lead is simply a capacity that helps to understand how to be attentive in front of a person who has leadership, therefore, not simply to exercise one’s own leadership; to be able to communicate, to be able to listen, are skills that we must teach to have a country that, in the face of extraordinary intelligence, is also able to put in place a more organisational capacity. We hope that we will be able to ensure that even those who have already been in the market for many years will be able to keep up to date with the training courses, with all the opportunities that will be offered, both from a technical point of view on these new challenges that the fourth industrial revolution is presenting us with and also on these aspects that are becoming increasingly important in the labour market.
Cosmi: Well, I hope you will also be able to attract human capital from around the world, the best from around the world because this will improve the Country and Milan. This is intending to attract brains, rather than encourage a brain drain, with the idea that “international” does not necessarily mean going abroad but can mean bringing foreigners to Italy. Moreover, this also means not letting the institutions be the mere representation of bureaucratic quibbles that end up debasing and demoralising an entire country. A country needs to feel that its expectations, dreams of the future, and skills are not being failed. I want to ask one last thing: in your opinion, who else should this Laboratory hear from, who else should it talk to, and how can it make a constant contribution to you?
Verona: I am a lover of cultural openness on an international level, so I believe that listening to colleagues in the fields you are already exploring who have significant international experience is very significant. I always find relevant insights from people whose cultures are different from ours and are doing some very successful activities. As we were saying earlier, the Anglo-Saxon countries are outstanding on the human capital front, and I think that Asian countries are also showing a speed of learning that many European countries do not have. If I think of many schools in Korea, in China, they have grown in twenty years in the same way that many European universities and schools have failed to grow despite having clear benchmarks at the global level. It is also essential to learn from best practices; it is always helpful to hear from someone who is successfully making innovations in human capital on one side or the other of the globe. It is a general idea but quite specific from the point of view of ideas.
Giovanni Farese: I agree with this observation on international openness, and fundamental ideas can come from Asia. I would also look at Africa, which I do with growing interest. I think exciting ideas can come from there too, and certainly broaden the diversity of contributions. After all, today we have conducted this conversation from our perspective, which is essentially that of the economic, social and political sciences. Still, in short, if we want to continue to use these labels that often lead to disciplinary autarchies that are counterproductive, it is, I believe, fundamental to broaden and expand the skills of the people involved, in terms of diversity, including disciplinary diversity, if we want to continue to use these labels that often lead to disciplinary autarchies that are counterproductive.
Cosmi: Well, I thank those who followed us, I thank you and also the technology that allowed us to reach each other even from different cities, but with the promise of seeing each other physically soon. Thank you, and all the best for your work.