A Top-Level Italy Does Exist, but It Must Be the Rule, Not the Exception

Via Sarfatti 25 asked seven Bocconi grads what was good and less good about Italy's economy. Here are the views of Diego Piacentini, Class of 1985 Positive: competencies of Italian human capital
Seen from abroad, Italy isn't as bad as it is pictured to be. Our best university graduates are just as good as those from the rest of Europe, even in the mathematical subjects where the biggest gap is supposed to be. But I must admit my point of view is a bit distorted because Amazon has a very selective hiring process, so I am in contact only with the elite.
Negative: attractiveness to foreign investors
We are not particularly attractive because a company invests in a foreign country if there is a strong demand to meet, or because it can save significantly due to lower local labor costs, or because there are outstanding competencies or infrastructure. At this moment in Italy, these factors are rarely found.
Positive: EU membershipForeign firms enter the Italian market, as we have also done, because it is a modern country of 60 million people with prospects for growth in many sectors - including online commerce - and because it belongs to the European Union. The freedom of movement among member nations and the chance to exploit, at least in part, the company infrastructures built in other EU countries have proven to be major factors.
Negative: overly complex legislative and fiscal context
This penalizes entrepreneurs so much that they just cannot live with it. All the conversations I hear about investing in Italy or Spain turn on the overall cost of operations. It isn't just the hourly wage that counts; it is the social taxes, the bureaucracy, and the flexibility. And for Italy, venture capitalists put all these items into the column "Environment risk".
Positive: Italian entrepreneurial capacity
It is not a cliché to state that Italian entrepreneurs have to be ten times as good as their American peers in order to succeed in the context I just described. And this country is full of great companies, as I realized at a meeting of the Seattle business community with the new Italian Ambassador to the US. We have these fantastic firms that have provided high-tech products to Boeing for decades. There are dozens of them, and our problem is we need to have hundreds or thousands of them.
Negative: public and private infrastructure
Italy is not among the leaders in this area, but I don't think we need to be overly dramatic. In terms of technological equipment, Italy is in play with the other major EU countries.
Positive: Public administration and bureaucracy
In this case again, as with competencies, I can only talk about the points of excellence. Anyway, when we decided to open a distribution center in Italy we met with collaboration and efficiency, and we chucked out all our preconceptions about Italian administration. I am aware that this is not the same in all parts of the country, but the fact that such excellence exists seems like a good sign to me.