But what exactly is Made in Italy? In order to fully understand how our firms have replaced the Anglo-Saxon financial philosophy with an all-Italian management style and how they have mitigated the technologism of globalization with a new humanism in the name of taste and creativity, we must go beyond the phrase. Severino Salvemini, Senior Professor of Organization Design at SDA Bocconi School of Management and Professor Emeritus of Business Organization at Bocconi University in Milan, compiled 53 case studies of companies that have made excellence a priority in order to shed light on this "elusive chemical composition." The pages of "Il quid impresa" (published by Egea) provide an all-around depiction of the components of Made in Italy's worldwide primacy: not only quality and high-end goods, whose design suggests a strong aesthetic value and a "technical expertise" that few other nations know how to activate, but also an exceptional entrepreneurial class that understands how to add intuition to the logic of operation, passion and emotion. Not to mention a widespread manufacturing capacity, frequently tied to clearly delineated geographical areas and subject to tacit knowledge that is difficult to imitate, and a governance that feeds on the productive relationship with the territory and in which the family of the entrepreneur plays a central role in the unpacking of its generational history.
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