The enterprise life
Thirty entrepreneurial stories that show thirty different ways of doing business
Telling the stories of companies through the voices of those who conceived, built and ran them, with a straight to the point approach: understanding how peer entrepreneurship really works. This is what Alessandro Scaglione attempts to do in his recently published “Italia, che impresa! Storie di cuore, coraggio, genio e resilienza” (Italy, what an enterprise! Stories of heart, courage, genius and resilience). Stories, to be precise, of men and women who have turned their lives into an all-round entrepreneurial adventure. Stories built of visions and dreams, of victories and defeats. In some cases stories told directly to the author, in others through the accounts of the people involved. Men and women who have created historic brands or young businesses. The 30 chapters with as many stories testify to the ingenuity, audacity, energy and commitment of those who have built a business from nothing or saved one because they felt they had to.
Scaglione tells the story of each of the subjects – effectively, though not always in the same way – with a brisk style and a few bold strokes that try to capture the essence of extraordinary human adventures, and demonstrate that, if you want to, you can do business in any situation.
The book is divided into six groups of five stories each, with a fact sheet for each company. We begin with those who “defied fate”, next those who are defined as “unstoppable”, then those who followed their “extraordinary intuition”, followed by those who were involved in “social enterprises”, then those who did not give up, and finally those who managed to continue the businesses started by fathers and ancestors before them. The stories of Giorgio Armani, Giovanni Rana, Salvatore Ferragamo, Rinaldo Piaggio, Matilde Vincenzi, Marcel Bich, Ferdinando Bocconi, Benedetto Noberasco and many others unfold before the eyes of the reader. Stories that, as the author points out, also teach us that business was done in a far more difficult climate than the one we are experiencing today.
In the introduction, Alessandro Scaglione writes: “Convinced that culture, before the economy, is the infrastructure of humanity, this book wants to contribute in its own way to the ‘tradition’ and the exchange of knowledge between those who have built an enterprise and those who will run it. Because doing business means believing in ourselves and our ideas, and immersing ourselves as much as possible in ecosystems that reward our ingenuity. Business is the school of those who still know how to dream, how to interpret the world and show the path of its possible evolution. It is the school of visionary people, capable of conceiving and acting on the economy as a reflection of a vision, a moral, a way of feeling and thinking, without compromising with the reality that lies before us”.
Italia, che impresa! Storie di cuore, coraggio, genio e resilienza
Alessandro Scaglione
GueriniNext, 2024
Thirty entrepreneurial stories that show thirty different ways of doing business
Telling the stories of companies through the voices of those who conceived, built and ran them, with a straight to the point approach: understanding how peer entrepreneurship really works. This is what Alessandro Scaglione attempts to do in his recently published “Italia, che impresa! Storie di cuore, coraggio, genio e resilienza” (Italy, what an enterprise! Stories of heart, courage, genius and resilience). Stories, to be precise, of men and women who have turned their lives into an all-round entrepreneurial adventure. Stories built of visions and dreams, of victories and defeats. In some cases stories told directly to the author, in others through the accounts of the people involved. Men and women who have created historic brands or young businesses. The 30 chapters with as many stories testify to the ingenuity, audacity, energy and commitment of those who have built a business from nothing or saved one because they felt they had to.
Scaglione tells the story of each of the subjects – effectively, though not always in the same way – with a brisk style and a few bold strokes that try to capture the essence of extraordinary human adventures, and demonstrate that, if you want to, you can do business in any situation.
The book is divided into six groups of five stories each, with a fact sheet for each company. We begin with those who “defied fate”, next those who are defined as “unstoppable”, then those who followed their “extraordinary intuition”, followed by those who were involved in “social enterprises”, then those who did not give up, and finally those who managed to continue the businesses started by fathers and ancestors before them. The stories of Giorgio Armani, Giovanni Rana, Salvatore Ferragamo, Rinaldo Piaggio, Matilde Vincenzi, Marcel Bich, Ferdinando Bocconi, Benedetto Noberasco and many others unfold before the eyes of the reader. Stories that, as the author points out, also teach us that business was done in a far more difficult climate than the one we are experiencing today.
In the introduction, Alessandro Scaglione writes: “Convinced that culture, before the economy, is the infrastructure of humanity, this book wants to contribute in its own way to the ‘tradition’ and the exchange of knowledge between those who have built an enterprise and those who will run it. Because doing business means believing in ourselves and our ideas, and immersing ourselves as much as possible in ecosystems that reward our ingenuity. Business is the school of those who still know how to dream, how to interpret the world and show the path of its possible evolution. It is the school of visionary people, capable of conceiving and acting on the economy as a reflection of a vision, a moral, a way of feeling and thinking, without compromising with the reality that lies before us”.
Italia, che impresa! Storie di cuore, coraggio, genio e resilienza
Alessandro Scaglione
GueriniNext, 2024