We publish the full text of the speech by Alessandro BenettonPresident of Edition and Vice President of Mundysat the sixth Annual Innovation Conference at Fordham University in New York. The US university monitors the big companies that every year, on a global level, stand out for the innovation capacity of their business, with a particular focus on ways of offering services to consumers. Alessandro Benetton, in particular, was called to speak to the students ofInnovation Hub of Fiumicino.
I find a lot of my story and my approach to life – and consequently to business – in words [citate] opening: courage, independence and discontinuity. It is from these that I would like to start to tell students something about myself and the companies whose trajectory I contribute to designing today.
I would like to start with “independence“, because it is from this value that I started.
I descend from an Italian family that has created a fashion brand from nothing with several thousand points of sale around the world. We have revolutionized the logic of the entire sector, both on a commercial and communication level, promoting the brand in many ways that were unthinkable at the time, for example with extremely cutting-edge advertising campaigns. As far as I’m concerned, I participated in the creation of that synergy between fashion and sportcreating the Formula 1 team that brought Michael Schumacher to victory for the first time.
I am convinced that sitting on what fate offers us is never a good idea. This is why I have never agreed to passively follow the habits that others before me had consolidated.
I therefore took everything from my family history that could project me into the future: firm roots, clear values and, perhaps above all, the ability to build a vision.
Affirming my independence – the first of the “discontinuities” that I have imposed on my path – has been my mission for some time.
It turned out to be a good choice. Because to pursue this goal I was forced at a very young age to speak out, to disagreeto take dirt roads and test myself in sectors far from the family activities.
That’s when I discovered who I was and what I wanted to do.
Studying in the United States was fundamental for me. It was the Eighties: it was not usual for an Italian boy to get on a plane and go to study overseas. In short, it took a fair amount of “courage” for him to break a pattern that had been repeated identically for dozens of years, while also giving excellent results. But I felt the need to broaden my perspective, my gaze. I also felt that the rules that we would play by in the business in the future would be decided there, and I wanted to be there.
I am a very lucky man, because this turning point was also decisive for me. To the point that I encouraged – to put it mildly – my three children Agnese, Tobias and Luce to study in the States as well.
Boston University shaped me as a student and as a man, but the truth turning point for me it was a meeting I had at Harvard Business School: Professor Michael Porter, the founder of Shared Value Initiative.
For those who don’t know, the Shared Value Initiative brings together a global community of organizations that consider addressing social problems an essential element for business development.
What does it mean, concretely?
It means that when we invest in our ideas, in our businesses, we are always also investing in the context of which they are part. Our choices should therefore be guided not so much by the short-term return on the investment, but by the way in which we intend to interact with the context.
This principle applies at all levels, including the micro level of small and medium-sized businesses in which I have been investing for more than thirty years through the company I founded when I was 28, 21 Invest. It was another, true act of courage decide not to enter the family business and to start your own business, becoming a pioneer in Italy in the private equity sector.
And perhaps it is for this courage that I am here to speak to you today as president of Edizione, a European holding company with assets of 14 billion euros, and among other things the main shareholder of Mundys, world leader in the infrastructure and mobility sector integrated and sustainable.
With its airports, motorway infrastructures, integrated mobility services and ITS, Mundys with its asset companies is active in 24 countries around the world. We can therefore consider the context in which it moves as a global context.
The challenges it must respond to are, consequently, global challenges. The first of which can only be to provide an effective response to the climate crisisfor which the infrastructure and mobility sector is undoubtedly a key sector.
The question we try to answer every day is: how can we do business in this sector, improving the travel experience of passengers, while reducing our environmental impact, reducing emissions to zero, revolutionizing the type of energy supply do our technologies need to work?
Our answer is: with a change of pace. With innovation.
For many years the mobility sector has remained unchanged.
We move thanks to the internal combustion engine, invented in 1853. The engine is the same, but the emissions remain.
Let’s think instead of the evolution in the telecommunications sector. Today it is normal to make phone calls or video calls through a smartphone, your computer, the watch you wear on your wrist.
It’s time for the mobility and infrastructure sector to undergo a profound rethink, not to mention a real revolution.
It’s what the new generations are asking of us, it’s what the planet needs.
This is therefore the mission that Mundys intends to pursue, integrating innovation at every level of its actions.
To tell you how we are working, I will use an example, that of Rome Fiumicino airportone of the most innovative and sustainable airports internationally.
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First of all, we have implemented innovation in a structural way, renovating the airport in every aspect.
He is an example of this boarding area A, inaugurated in May 2022, built entirely according to the logic of circular economy and also powered through a photovoltaic system installed on the roof.
A model that we will shortly extend to the entire infrastructure: by 2030 the entire airport will be powered substantially by renewables and operated by electric airport vehicles.
Secondly, reflecting on the fact that the airport-city journey involves further emissions, we have worked to diversify the airport’s connectivity as much as possible, promoting car sharing, public transport and a rail system that effectively connects the airport with the city center (and we called it “Leonardo Express”). Furthermore, we strongly wanted to equip ourselves with the first Italian vertiportwhich we will open by the Rome Jubilee of 2025.
This is a hub for electric flying taxis, which will take passengers from the airport to the center of Rome in twenty minutes. Zero traffic, very low noise impact, zero emissions: more than an innovation, it is the birth of one new form of urban mobilitywhich experts call Urban Air Mobility.
In the awareness that not even the most enlightened of entrepreneurs, alone, is capable of continuously innovating, we then decided to create in the beating heart of ADR an entire ecosystem dedicated to innovation.
L’Innovation Hub is the first startup accelerator dedicated exclusively to the airport sector.
Under the guidance of a “cabin crew” of excellent professionals, numerous startups from all over the world develop and test the Proof of Concept of the most advanced airport innovations.
23 of them have already obtained the PoC and, thanks to this, financial support and business opportunities. Primarily from ADR, but also from a network of which we have been promoters: “Airports for Innovation”, which brings together 10 airport managers spread across the world who share our mission.
An effective example of the technologies we develop is that of Aeroficial Intelligence, a startup that puts artificial intelligence and data analysis at the service of airport operations. To understand, imagine an airport where every day 1,000 aircraft land, take off and move around the runway, having to refuel, load and unload passengers and goods, and carry out security checks. Where unexpected events, such as the weather, are always around the corner. Now imagine an artificial intelligence system that governs all this, and does so in a predictive manner, with the ability to modify flight flows because it already knows the traffic evolution of the next 4-5 hours. The advantages from the point of view of efficiency and quality of service will be very significant.
Every year we evaluate applications from new startups but I am proud to announce that, starting from 2023, we have decided to also give space to ideas coming from ADR employees.
The “ADR Hangar Program” was created to avoid losing the knowledge that the people who work there have of the airport sector, and their intuitions on how it could be improved in a sustainable way. This is a call completely similar to those aimed at startups, but reserved for group employees, who will have the opportunity to realize their own project idea, supported by the experts of the Innovation Cabin Crew.
We will also replicate this model of innovation at all levels of corporate life for another subsidiary, namely Avolta, the largest Travel, Food & Retail group in the world.
As you can see, there are many ways to implement innovation in the infrastructure and mobility sector.
The model that I have illustrated to you is already very advanced – to the point that the World Economic Forum asked us to coordinate a table dedicated to identifying new financial instruments to make the energy transition of the 18 thousand airports present in the world possible – but I am the first to be aware that it is perfectible. And that the way to improve it is to listen to those who really have their eyes turned towards the future, the right perspective for looking to tomorrow. That is, you young people.
I would therefore like to close my speech with a request.
My generation must clearly do everything to pass on the knowledge and tools to act. However, it will be up to you to pick up the baton and run the next stage.
So imagine, be creative, disagree when necessary.
Always, raise your head and make yourself heard.
* President of Edition and Vice President of Mundys