Discussions at this talk-debate session, held to mark of the launch of the e-book L’Italia e il Rinascimento manifatturiero (“Italy and the Manufacturing Renaissance”), sought to analyze what new synergies between research, education, and business are necessary in order to fully seize the opportunities offered by the said renaissance. In 2009, an MIT professor coined the term “Manufacturing Renaissance” when, after the heady days of the paper economy and the predominance of finance, a growing awareness emerged especially in the United States of the urgency of reviving the real economy, with a realization that having a strong industrial component of GDP is a factor of stability for the future of a country.
It was noted that even Europe, for its part, is moving in the same direction, setting itself the goal achieving a 20% share of GDP for manufacturing by 2020, in order to ensure such stability. Currently, the European average is 16%, with Italy at 16.5-17%, despite 25% of its manufacturing capacity being burnt up during the crisis years. Breaking down this figure geographically, it was highlighted that Italy’s center-north emerges as having a manufacturing-to-GDP ratio similar to that of Germany, while in the center-south, the very fragmented industrial base fares less well.
The participants stressed that the manufacturing revolution or renaissance may not yield the desired impacts in terms of development, employment, and prosperity if it is not accompanied by three key elements, namely:
- modern and efficient infrastructure: talk of the Internet of Things in the absence of widespread and efficient broadband was likened to producing modern cars without there being any roads on which to drive them;
- a bureaucracy that ceases to be a fetter on businesses and finds genuine ways of achieving efficiency and simplification; and
- an education system capable of producing proficient experts at all levels, not just within the ranks of universities. It was acknowledged that there are vanguards of excellence within the university sector in Italy, and overall the system is not as poor as some statistics would appear to suggest. Nevertheless, it was seen as essential for the education and research sectors to pull together and for their overall average standard be up to meeting the challenges posed by industrial innovation.
It was observed that processes aimed at revitalizing educational offerings and forging links between education and industry – set in train both at a central and local level – are having to contend with legacies of the past, including divergent capacity levels between different local areas, internal resistance from those who are strangers to competitive dynamics, new legislative instruments with certain aspects requiring improvement, and finally, a shortage of available financial resources. It was seen as paramount that a new cultural and educational model be entrenched, based on certain key approaches, the first of which being the modernization and creation of vocational upper secondary schools (istituti professionali) capable of producing highly-skilled and socially-rewarded technical specialists. Secondly, through the introduction of greater didactic flexibility, degree programs should be established that are more responsive to industry needs, thereby separating courses of study for researchers from those with closer links to the manufacturing world. Lastly, it was felt that while on the one hand there is a need to rethink (or at least evaluate from an employment perspective) the effectiveness of 3-year bachelor’s degrees, on the other it is necessary to speed up courses in order to be truly competitive, since looking for work in one’s thirties means being at a disadvantage to age peers from other countries who already have a career.
