Man shaper of his fate (no-one excluded)

by Stefano Lavorini. “Much the worse if chairs don’t turn into benches”.

A fine metaphor on which to reflect because it highlights that only benches can be places where one person (perhaps an older person) may give advice to another (perhaps a younger person), and viceversa.

I heard it being pronounced, by now more than a year ago, by the magnificent rector of LIUC-Università Cattaneo, Federico Visconti, on the occasion of an encounter organized by Gipea (¹).
And that the mode of transmission of learning, considering the essential need to invest in the young, is a subject dear to Visconti cannot surprise people, due to his role, but also well knowing the perseverance with which for many years he dealt with the generational turnover in the SMFs.

He wrote a lot about it in the book “Family up! Il giovane imprenditore tra continuità e cambiamento” (²), in which stories of LIUC graduates who made their family firms grow are described.

We read on page 196: «the sources of entrepreneurial energy have a common denominator: the ambition to leave one’s mark. Looking ahead, what will support the motivations of the entrepreneurs? […]
As I know them, I would say passion, dedication, the courage associated with the profession. In the end, the sense of responsibility that animates them and the longterm prospects they view. In the words of an entrepreneur friend of mine «If you do this job, your task is to seek the conditions for creating the same that also benefit others».
[…] Many entrepreneurs are already projected towards the “ambition of 4.0”. They do so generating projects more complex than those generated in the past, experimenting new managerial ways and, not least, committing fresh capital».


I agree with what the professor writes, also because I have received considerable confirmation gained in the field. What is more, in Italy - I would say despite everything - the “passion” for enterprise is still alive, that goes hand in hand with the owner and family model. It is true though that the world is changing, and to stay competitive in a global market, growing both on a level of volumes and in terms of entrepreneurial criteria, is by now imperative. How does one take this step without betraying one’s basic nature?

I recently set this question to an entrepreneur, Michael Sobiesky, “only” thirty years of age, in the margins of the interview that you can read in this issue of the magazine on page 38.
These are his words.
«Probably I am a romantic, considering my age, but I often nostalgically think of the past, above all for the values and the passions that one once put into entrepreneurship. All the same one ought to understand the process of an inevitable historic transition that - whether you like it or not - involves the entire economic scenario.
Even the world of packaging is today projected towards a broader dimension, that has led players to band together, to the detriment of the smaller concern. Customers are evermore multinationals, that often find it hard to recognize small to-medium-sized firms, even when they are capable of offering high quality and service and technology at competitive prices».

And at my observation that, definitively, the choice is reduced down to either growing or selling, he answered me thus:»Right, You have to understand in time, or rather ahead of time, so as not to put yourself out of the game. In 2015 we had a “jewel” of a company (Cosmografica Albertini, Ed.), with a competitive offer, a turnover of nearly ten millions euros and high margins, almost all of which reinvested. But we understood that we couldn’t “sit on our laurels” because, after a few years, they would not have considered us credible, due to our size. I and my sister played a decisive role in bringing these reflections to the attention of my father (Emilio Albertini Ed.), who shared them and decided to wager on a different future, placing his faith in us. In fact, the age factor helped us understand, before others, the need for this step».


I conclude, going back to Visconti, how in one of his articles under the title “the courage to change” (³), he started out by recalling a motto of Saint Augustin…. “Hope has two beautiful daughters: disdain and courage. Disdain for things as they are, and the courage to change them”.

Beautiful daughters, I add, may they always proceed together, whatever the wealth and the profession.




 

(1) The 34th GIPEA Technical Convention - 29 November 2017 - LIUC-Università Cattaneo, Castellanza (VA)


(2) “Family up! Il giovane imprenditore tra continuità e cambiamento”, Valentina Lazzarotti, Federico Visconti. Guerini Next, Milan, 2017


(3) La Prealpina, 28 November 2017