VARESE – «Innovative, technological, sustainable, inclusive, European. In a word: Industrial». This is the province of Varese that he imagines for the future president of Confindustria Varese Roberto Grassi. Qualifying adjectives of a territory with which he concluded his report toGeneral Assembly 2024 of the employers’ association which was held on Monday 17 June in the headquarters of Mv Agusta Motor della Schiranna, with the participation also of the national president of Confindustria Emanuele Orsini.
Innovation as a strategic driver of development
At the center of the 2024 assembly work is innovation, but above all, how to build one new competitiveness for businesses. Starting from the implementation, with concrete actions, of Strategic Plan #Varese2050. «We are in the execution phase – specified President Grassi – immediately after the presentation of the Plan to the 2022 General Assembly, we started concrete projects. We are carrying out actions to support production chains, startups, ESG issues and the construction of a new innovation ecosystem.” Four construction sites to build a future of growth for the area, inaugurated also with a promise: «New ideas and new technologies generate new investments, increase the productivity of all of us and the competitiveness of the system. We are so aware of this that the construction of an ecosystem of innovation and startup development, starting from our territorial industrial clusters, has become the center of the competitive renewal action that we have undertaken with the #Varese2050 Strategic Plan. We need a business and innovation accelerator. A commitment that, as Confindustria Varese, we have made towards the territory and which we are respecting with the Mill project which will be built alongside Liuc – Cattaneo University”.
Mill, study coming soon
A project that of Mill (Manufacturing, Innovation, Learning, Logistics) which, after having passed the authorization phase, has now entered the more concrete and planning one: «We launched a beauty contest in which several Italian architecture firms participated. The proposals have already all been delivered to us. In the next few weeks we will select them and by the end of the month we will have the architecture studio who will design the construction site. But Mill is not just an infrastructure. The construction site that we are going to open in Castellanza will serve to build the hardware whose software has already started working. While we design and build the walls of Mill, we fill with content the services and the new representation action that will be based and developed there. This is how they became even stronger alliances with Liuc, Mill’s natural co-partner. At the same time we are widening the links of a network of collaborations which, in the vision of the future, will lead us to broaden and multiply the possibilities for action. Starting from Its and then arrive at the university system, research and incubation. This is how the projects with ComoNext, with InnoVits, with Sodalitas, with Fondazione Ergo were born. Thanks to Confindustria Bergamo we have started contacts with Kilometro Rosso and other joint labs, such as those created within the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa. Last, in chronological order, is the important agreement that we have signed with the Polytechnic of Milan through PoliHub”.
Open innovation, startups and new technologies
The objectives of these collaborations are those of broaden the boundaries of comparison, scouting for new technologies, paving the way for what is defined as open innovation: «This is why we have started a process that will start this year on an experimental basis for metalworking companies, and which we are already partially doing for other sectors, divided into several phases: the exploration of opportunities through the technological missions of Open Mind with Confindustria Bergamo and Confindustria Emilia Centro; training in innovation processes; the creation of communities of innovators; the contamination of the production system with the world of startups. Those born in the area are too few – remarked Grassi – we must attract more of them, we must ensure that our young people have the courage to develop their ideas, we must look for deep technology startups that offer not only app ideas, but new manufacturing ideas for existing industrial supply chains and bring them here. There are so many opportunities today to bring this technological contamination to life.” Thus President Grassi also citing concrete examples: «Let’s think about the application areas of Artificial Intelligence, cyber security, the digitalisation of processes and products, research on new generation materials, bioprinting, opportunities related to energy (such as those on hydrogen), motoring, new generation batteries, carbon capture, biotech. In order for these technological opportunities to be seized and implemented effectively in the production system, we have also re-read our membership base, clustering it by technological skills, outlet markets and supply chains. All with the aim of gathering homogeneous needs and designing new collaboration systems.”
The dialogue with the Jrc
At the center of the meeting of Varese companies is also the need to look at Europe and the territory at the same time. «Varese can play a winning card in this regard that other economic and production systems do not have. An example is the presence of the Joint Research Center in Ispra, the only one in Italy and the largest in Europe – Grassi was keen to highlight – as Confindustria Varese, in this last year, we have begun to deal with the JRC more intensely. The concrete demonstration of a closer integration of the activities of the Ispra laboratories with the manufacturing context of the territory is the recent renewal of the Collaboration Agreement between our LIUC – Cattaneo University and the Jrc. An agreement with the aim of orienting European policies on crucial issues such as sustainability, digital and industrial transformation, healthcare. The goal is to lead the way for a further step forward: the involvement of our entire Confindustria system of representation at a national level”. According to Grassi, the contribution to the dialogue with the JRC that all of Confindustria could guarantee is that of field experiences, data and developments in the industrial competitive context in which companies are the protagonists and which they could share with European researchers: «A structured collaboration between JRC and Confindustria, a topic on which we have already begun to discuss with the new president Emanuele Orsini, could act as a link between research, politics and businesses. If the European decision-making model is ‘Science for policy’, activate, as the Confindustria System, a dialogue with the fundamental research activity of the Ispra laboratories is not only far-sighted, but necessary.”
Transition 5.0 and tax wedge
In President Grassi’s report there was no shortage of messages to national politics: «The Transition Plan 5.0 of the Government – stated the President of Confindustria Varese – must be rethought. It doesn’t work the way it was set up. With the current time horizons it does not support the development of the industrial system. We spent at least 6 months waiting for the implementing decrees, which are only now starting to come out, indicating how to access incentives for investments that we should conclude by 31 December 2025. Not only have we wasted too much time, but it is also clear that in this way we will only be able to give rise, at most, to a modernization of our factories. We need much more. We need to grow our productivity. And to achieve this we need structural measures that have a five-year vision. This is how jobs are created, not with bonuses. We are not asking for help or assistance. We ask for a long-term country strategy». Finally, the request “to be able to guarantee a quality of life that also involves an adequate level of net wages”. Grassi was clear on this: «Let’s go back to asking for a structural cut in the tax wedge».
Confindustria Varese Grassi assembly – MALPENSA24
