Veneto is among the top Italian regions for the number of profitable companies. The latest research by the North East Foundation has certified this once again. After the Covid disaster they all restarted and are now facing new challenges. In Italy they are not the only ones trying to see far ahead, of course, but on their side they have a functioning Region and a long manufacturing tradition. They have achieved important results. They are often companies a family run, something that in the last thirty years has made the resilience of the system and also the dialogue with politics easier. It took Italians some time to understand the miracle of a North-East which surpassed opulent Bavaria in terms of turnover and exports. The first energy sources in the fields, such as biogas, were tested here. The political flair of Umberto Bossi it has typified its territorial identity for a long time without, however, raising barriers towards other political representations.
Around the warehouses between Padua, Venice and Treviso today there is something that needs to be fixed better, however. The sadness of the industrial desert of the Covid days is material for photographic exhibitions. Luca Zaia at the end of 2023 it promised 550 million euros in funding between regional resources and the ERDF.
In order not to find ourselves in a few years with a critical generational transition, both among workers and employers, we need to update ourselves here. The symbiosis between company owners and employees remains solid, but if they don’t want to remain a miracle of themselves, the leaders, first of all, must study: train themselves. The process is the same for those who put in money and those who produce in the workshop to compete in Europe and beyond. The cultural legacies of old entrepreneurs – for example, Benetton, Marzotto, Polegato, De Longhi – are no longer enough. Doing business means continually updating yourself, applying the best solutions on production costs, saving energy, not destroying the environment, creating good working conditions.
“There is an elite to be trained”
Second Matteo Sinigaglia, general director of Fòrema – the training body of Confindustria Veneto – the time has come to start from the ruling class. “We need to train a new class among entrepreneurs, capable of developing factories and changing their production processes thanks to the best digital technologies applied with a view to energy sustainability,” he says.
There are those far and wide in the business world who overuse terms such as digitalisation and sustainability. Fòrema, which based its success with billions in turnover on managerial training, so as not to deceive anyone, seizes the opportunity of the Pnrr funding and starts with a pilot project for company leaders. We propose it to the Venetian business elite, she explained. It is the one that wants to know the latest functional innovations, not only for production efficiency, but also for energy efficiency. But who is this elite who has determination and tradition in their blood? For now, around thirty entrepreneurs have been selected and, we imagine, also very curious.
A new miracle from the North-East?
The English term Masterclass helps the promoters of the project and serves to open the doors of Industry 5.0 to the “trainees”. They will be taught how to integrate the most advanced technologies into their competitive arena. What their grandparents did by going around the world as emigrants or bending their backs in the farms to one day arrive in the financial salons and bring in a lot of money, they replace with hours of classroom and field experiences. They have six meetings available starting Monday 7 May in the Smact Center in Padua.
Confindustria Veneto and Fòrema have relied on managers and teachers from the Swiss Institute for Disruptive Innovation and from the Universities of Padua, Venice, Udine and Trieste. Artificial intelligence? How to escape the process that already exists in many companies in the Veneto. The greatest wrong that the thirty selected could do to the memory of the sacrifices of their land is to fail to grasp the‘global opportunity, compelling, new technologies. They won’t do it, perhaps even just to allow Italians to understand more quickly a new miracle in the North East.
