CULTURE

Italian Capital: 'Beyond fragility 

27 November, 2020

It was a pleasure for us to inaugurate the XIX Settimana della Cultura d'Impresa together with Antonio Calabrò, president of Museimpresa. Unfortunately, the weather didn't allow us to meet him in person, but we didn't give up and interviewed him for #Teloracconto, thus discovering his Alfista memories!

  We are leaving the 19th Enterprise Culture Week behind us. We regret not having been able to physically share this experience with you and with the many colleagues from Italy's business museums, true industrial excellences that bear witness to Italian beauty, but we would like to thank Museimpresa for having organised a schedule of virtual events that always reveal new points of view and curiosities.

For our part, we have created the columns #TeloRacconto, "Get in the car now" and "Park in the archive" to share anecdotes and Alfisti stories with our audience. You'll find them all in this newsletter!

We couldn't even welcome the President in person Antonio Calabrò. One of our events at the Museum, unfortunately cancelled, was dedicated to him and his new book "Beyond Fragility". Hoping that the appointment will soon be possible, we thought we would anticipate some of these interesting contents, sharing with you the article published by the Ansa agency. 

Antonio Calabrò, director of the Pirelli Foundation and vice-president of Assolombarda, after a long experience as a journalist in which he covered, among other things, the mafia war in Palermo, decided to go 'Beyond fragility' in his new book, which was born from the very title, on the first day of lockdown for the Covid 19 pandemic. "What'snext?" he asked himself, and looked for strengths for the new rules of the game, for those necessary changes that the Coronavirus has accelerated.
"The main word is knowledge, not competence, because competence without critical knowledge is somewhat blind. Technologies wear out skills, they change rapidly, and at that point what do you do? You need critical knowledge to renew yourself. Unfortunately we are in a universe where words are used with a shovel. I would like them to be used with a laser, with a scalpel, because the culture of words is democracy,' Antonio Calabrò told ANSA.
"It is a book of battle proposals", explained the director of the Pirelli Foundation, who urged people to choose "fair trade not free trade", i.e. trade in solidarity, "within a system of rules that take into account the environment and social rights, such as the exclusion of child labour. Not that of free trade where, however it goes, the only objective is to make money," he says. "What do we want Italy to be like? A place that lives on its intelligence and enterprise or on subsidies? It is a battle to be fought if we refuse, as Camus says, 'to be on the side of the scourge'. And I have faith in the possibility of doing battle, I do not belong to a generation of surrender. I am 70 years old, I started working as a journalist when I was 20, and 15 years ago I changed profession. My generation has a responsibility to share what it has learned, even its mistakes,' he explains.
In the book, in which each chapter opens with a literary quotation, the author dwells on topics such as the Green Deal, algorithms, social fractures and Europe's ambitious challenges, but it all comes down to enterprise. "We are thinking a lot, even too much, about emergency interventions in the face of the crisis. Of course, it is essential for those who have lost income and work. But then how do you build the resources for development? We give subsidies to everyone, but where do we get the money? We have to start building wealth again, and that's what enterprise is. The subsidy subculture is predominant, but it is better to work on long-term development,' he says. He added: "work is the definition of a role within the social system, it is a piece of freedom. We need to go back to thinking about work and speed within the technology system, which means training and study. A young man or woman with an idea must be able to turn it into a business". "Today Covid is telling us: change this programme, but the change is not only economic, it is cultural and a matter of responsibility.
And it is clear that in this scenario "nothing is taken for granted and I do not like the idea of scrapping. Being retired as a reject is a mistake. I owe a lot to my grandfather and my old professors, to many great elderly people. It is a piece of collective intelligence that we have lost with Covid'. (source ANSA)

"'The culture of words is democracy'

According to Calabrò, in the world of the future we should go 'not towards the welfare of retirement but of training, of studying all one's life. Aiming at the economy of knowledge, which is not once and for all'. But wouldn't that penalise young people? "No because, as we have seen, substitution does not exist, it has never happened.
On the contrary, a double damage is created by making young people bear the pension debt. Young people deserve a priority intervention that is not an exchange between old and new generations".
Calabrò said that the direction to be taken was towards "business continuity, the quality of public investment, not in order to play the role of the master state, the guarantor of economic processes, but to invest in training, school quality and infrastructure.
You cannot do smart working or international joint research without broadband and 5G". "During the pandemic, Europe showed an extraordinary common intelligence. It's true, European welfare has many limits but the Chinese one is not there and the American one is a disaster. Let's strengthen Europe. At home we are dying, inside the common European house we are in the world," Calabrò said. (ANSA).