Range Rover renews its collaboration with the Polytechnic of Turin and launches the second edition of the Leadership Academy, which this year will involve students of the Master’s Degree in Systemic Design. The idea is simple: the founders of some successful startups will tell their story and that of the company they lead in various workshops. At the presentation were Simona Roveda, co-founder of LifeGate in 2000 and founder of Fattoria Scaldasole, passionate about nature, environment and sustainability; Giancarlo Rocchietti, founder of Euphon, a company in the media and television production sector, today president of the Investors’ Club; Camilla Colucci, co-founder and CEO under 30 of Circularity, a startup that guides Italian companies towards circular production and consumption models and processes; Roberta Ligossi, founder of Ta Daan, the first digital destination dedicated to design craftsmanship that combines tradition with new contemporary languages. And there were also the elected rector of the Polytechnic of Turin, Stefano Corgnati, in one of his first public outings, Silvia Barbero, professor of the Systemic Design degree course, and Marco Santucci, president and CEO of Jaguar Land Rover Italia.
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The project
The project is based on what Range Rover calls “Leadership by Example”, a set of experiences and behaviors “that represents an innate drive to improve and reinvent ourselves”. “Leaders – observes the rector – are those who embody a series of values and set themselves as an example for others”. Sustainability, environmental protection, gender equality, openness and curiosity towards others: this is the common ground, explains Corgnati , on which the automotive multinational and the Polytechnic are moving. Santucci goes into more detail: “What does it take to be a leader? In our opinion, five fundamental characteristics: the vision to inspire integrity, the aptitude to transmit knowledge and values, the ability to build a network of relationships, the determination to face challenges and overcome them ethically, and finally the ability to create and transmit emotions”. So this year, the Leaders by Example will be the young founders of technological startups, who, coordinated by teachers, will work in direct contact with students, in meetings that will become a forum for discussion to give the working groups the opportunity to develop a unique and innovative idea, which can also be transformed into a business. For this reason, more consolidated entrepreneurs will participate in the workshops, capable of transmitting a structured mental approach, which does not ride changes but generates them: two leadership perspectives, each with its own peculiarities.
“On the one hand – adds Corgnati – the Polytechnic of Turin has consolidated the practice of technology and knowledge transfer to small and medium-sized businesses in the area over the years, and on the other it has developed its own entrepreneurial vocation. We are the Italian university from which the most startups are born, thanks to i3P and not only that, but we also go further: the presence of financiers is inherent to the activity of the Polytechnic, with the experience of Liftt, an accelerator that becomes an internal business angel ‘university. And there is the whole ecosystem that revolves around OGRs”.
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A sustainable future
The project will also be supported by Range Rover with a financial contribution for the most deserving working group. This bonus will facilitate the process of establishing the winning startup, which will concretely work on the theme of the ecological transition in its broadest applications (from circularity, to sustainability, from electric motors to charging). In this way, both at an educational and working level, the project lines undertaken by the students will be able to have a structured path full of new opportunities available. “For the Polytechnic this collaboration is the model on which we will also build other partnerships between public and private”, explains the rector.
“Working with young people is positive for everyone, but for the automotive sector it is fundamental, because it allows us to deal with different points of view and different sensitivities. The ecological transition does not just mean producing electric cars, but paying attention to the impact we leave on the world”, reflects Santucci. “The people we interface with as a company often don’t understand it, but young people do: today they can influence the choices of parents and relatives, tomorrow they will be able to become buyers themselves. And then it will be normal to choose interiors in recycled and eco-compatible fabric, rather than leather, even if they cost more”. Zero impact as the sublimation of luxury is an interesting perspective: “Ours is a customer who spends up to 150,000 euros on a car, and is willing to do so more willingly if he understands that he is setting in motion a virtuous circle from which benefits arise for everyone”.
And startups? “Like the Engineering Hub launched last year, the one with the Turin Polytechnic is also an entirely Italian experiment, but should a useful idea emerge, it would be easy for us to report it to Range Rover”.
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