Being entrepreneurs in Italy, in a context that is not always favorable for infrastructures, bureaucratic loads, various and possible diseconomies, has in a certain sense to do with the art of war. Sometimes you get the feeling that it is you – with the things you believe in – versus the rest of the world. Precisely for this reason, if here with us there was a code of honor of the company that resists, it would not be very different from bushido, the seven principles that governed the life of the samurai: honesty, courage, compassion, courtesy, sincerity, honor and loyalty. . Torch to keep burning even in the darkest night, an inheritance to be passed on to children.
It rests on this suggestion Entrepreneurs and samurai – A journey to discover the values and spirit of the noble Japanese warriors in Italian companies, a volume that is now being published by Este Libri edited together by business consultants Fabio Cappellozza, Gianni Dal Pozzo and Mariano Maugeri, for twenty years correspondent for the Sole 24 Ore. Text that comes from a meditation on the days of the pandemic, when Italy was closed at home and companies, in many cases, could not produce due to force majeure. And those who led them, in some cases, felt within themselves even stronger the sense of belonging to a project, rather than to a business. Almost like a form of asceticism.
The book thus identifies 15 figures of “samurai-entrepreneurs” who, from the North to the South of the peninsula, do business in the ethical – and therefore also somewhat “epic” – sense of the term. There are those who are not afraid to make decisions like Massimo Pavin of Srimax, those who have the makings of an anthropologist like Emilio Leo of Lanificio Leo, those who know everything about raw materials and where to find them like Mauro Fanin of Cereal Docks, those who study demographic curves such as Luca Tomasi di Inglesina, up to those who know best of all that quality makes the difference even when it comes to enhancing products from the most considered commodities (Pippo Callipo di Callipo).
Fifteen stories, those told by Maugeri with an amused and amusing approach, which seem a bit to refer to the lesson of Arturo Ferrarin, heir to the homonymous wool mill in Thiene (Vicenza) and a great lover of flying who in 1920, at only 26 years old, against the will of the family, with his second-hand Ansaldo SVA 9 biplane launched an unlikely flight from Rome to Tokyo, in the company of the young engineer Gino Cappannini. He arrived at his destination after 112 hours of flight and countless ups and downs. For him, Prince Hirohito proclaimed 40 days of celebration. He didn’t know, but he was ideally the first of the all-Italian dynasty of samurai entrepreneurs.
Businessmen and samurai
Journey to discover the values and spirit of the noble Japanese warriors in Italian companies
Curated by Fabio Cappellonza and Gianni Dal Pozzo
Interviews by Mariano Maugeri
Foreword by Marco Vitale
It’s Books
Euro 22
pp. 144