The roundtable session got underway with an acknowledgement by the participants of the crucial importance of reviving Italy’s artisan culture – a tradition synonymous with the production of high-quality goods through the accumulation, pooling and dissemination of know-how. This, it was observed, is not only because Italy has inherited an invaluable productive heritage, as emerges from Renaissance treatises as well as more recent studies, but also because turning that heritage to account in today’s economic circumstances may prove decisive in the country’s efforts to overcome the global crisis.
The current upheaval has spelt the end of the so-called “paper economy” and the emergence of a new paradigm that hinges on real development. Italy, a manufacturing-based country, can and should take advantage of this. However, it first needs to tackle some critical issues that have arisen in recent years, and which could jeopardize Italy’s ability to compete internationally.
It was noted that, in Italy, skilled artisans tend to congregate in small “workshops”. Indeed, a continuing hallmark of the Italian production system is that 95% of the country’s GDP is derived from businesses with fewer than 10 employees, which are often family-run. This elaborate system offers many benefits (such as high-quality products, business continuity and skills transfer), but also has several limitations (including often inadequate levels of capitalization, difficulties operating in international markets, and a propensity for risk aversion).
In short, being “small” is neither good nor bad: it is just the Italian way of doing business and should, as such, be nurtured by, for instance, facilitating the integration of SMEs into a production network within which businesses can forge alliances, feel more protected in the face of international competition, and innovate through greater sharing of new production techniques and know-how.
However, it was emphasized that the ability to put Italian know-how into service as a productive resource also depends on the quality of training. Today, Italy suffers from a real disconnection between education models and the intake of young people by firms. The denigration of professional training courses, and the notion instilled in young people that they lead to second-rate jobs, has resulted in a situation where the youth unemployment rate is 30%, whilst businesses often have difficulty filling certain key positions.
The participants stressed that, in this regard, extensive reform is required in order to ensure that training provided meets the needs of the production system. There are numerous approaches that Italy could look to for inspiration, including recent reforms in France, for instance, or the German model, in which young people decide at age 15 whether to embark on a technical (vocational) or abstract (intellectual) course of studies. Also acknowledged was the need to overcome the belief that tertiary education must necessarily take place in universities, with the roundtable participants pointing out that technical institutes can play a pivotal role in the transmission of know-how and technical skills that are in great demand by employers. Finally, it was felt that the provision of training must be accompanied by flexible but protected forms of employment, through the introduction of appropriate employment contracts and welfare arrangements that are less disadvantageous to young people.
In closing, it was observed that the revival of Italy’s artisan tradition is also hampered by a legislative and bureaucratic framework which often penalizes businesses operating in the productive sector. Rules are crucial insofar as they guarantee competition by establishing a level playing field, ensure quality by combating trade in imitation goods, and link production to long-term goals such as sustainability. However, the participants felt that the focus is all too often on quantity rather than quality of rules. This legislative horror vacui, as it were, is a profoundly retrograde phenomenon, in that it mainly handicaps small businesses and the traditional manufacturing sector. The crisis and increasing international competition have demonstrated that streamlining burdensome bureaucracy is not only desirable, but also imperative for the survival and revitalization of Italy’s extraordinary productive heritage.