We are the modern manufacturing

While entrepreneurs are “business” men and women, according to a definition that is part of our everyday language, for the industrial companies of Varese it is necessary to revise “doing business” in the light of a new grammar in which new words have been added that have started to find new spaces in the territories, in the minds of entrepreneurs and heart of manufactures. The “contemporary manufacturing” is born from the meeting of traditional terms such as work, competence, passion, innovation and internationalisation with the new frontier represented by the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud, big data and intelligent industry.

It is with this premise that the report of Riccardo Comerio starts in the 2016 Assembly of the Union of Industrialists of the Province of Varese in Malpensafiere. The President of Univa is aware that when incorporating new vocabulary terms, it means that the transformation has already taken place and the reality already formed. It is no coincidence that all this took place in a particular historical moment in which the great economic crisis of 2008 coincided with the affirmation at all levels of the digital culture. Contemporary manufacturing arises therefore from this double “black swan”, would say the philosopher-mathematician Nassim Taleb, author of a splendid essay on the subject. Two black swans able to confuse anyone, even those who, like the industrialists from Varese, have over a century of history behind them.

The three unicorns Amazon, Google and Facebook are the icons of this new time: the largest trading company in the world that does not have a shop, a search engine that produces pure knowledge based on an algorithm, reaches the highest market capitalisation in history, and the largest information company does not own a newspaper and does not have journalists on the payroll. But what have Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Jeff Bezos  in common respectively the founders of Facebook, Google and Amazon, with any entrepreneur of Varese? “The ability to attract talent, social responsibility towards the community and the environment, to strive for innovation, product quality and services, the balanced use of corporate resources,” emphasises Comerio. The DNA is thus the same, the forms in which it is expressed changes because in this world everything transforms.

Contemporary manufacturing entrepreneurs must find new allies to help make smarter the many and excellent products baked by the thousands of factories that form the profile of the infinite city from Luino to Gallarate, Busto Arsizio to Saronno. To facilitate this alliance, according to Comerio, we need to build an entrepreneurial ecosystem that includes the different social, institutional, economic and financial components. “The companies,” says the chairman of Univa, “need to rely on universities, transport infrastructure, banks and finance companies, local authorities, information and a territory that guarantees a certain quality of life.”

The example of examples is the Silicon Valley. One could, however, also think about a homemade model able to encourage that efficiency of the context that the businesses need but that would do much good to all those who have chosen to live in this territory. The president of the industrial cites the usual unfinished projects, such as the Arcisate-Stabio railway, the ring road of Varese, a lack of Malpensa airport destiny and the Pedemontana that “will have a sense of completeness only when it will directly connect Gallarate to Bergamo.” The context also depends on the quality of laws and the industrialists recognise the good work done by the Government Renzi, the Jobs Act, the accelerated depreciation for investments, the deduction of the IRAP component work, the support of investment in research and development up to the Patent Box.

The conclusion of Comerio brings together the two dimensions that best characterise the entrepreneur: the concreteness and vision. Two complementary qualities and seemingly antithetical. “This is not a manufacturing devoid of body and physicality, and even of a fleeting revolution, but a revolution that chases the contemporary. Enzo Ferrari said: “If you can dream it you can do it.” Our dream is our reality, and so we are, we must be contemporary. “