The Venetian Phoenix

At the 57the edition of the Venice Biennale, firms have their own pavillion: "The Evolution of the Art of Learning by Doing: 9 Digital – and Non-Digital – Case Stories." It's about nine business histories illustrating creative processes born out of intuition, which, by going through tortuous paths, manage to be turned into products that enjoy international recognition for their quality and originality.

Dainese and Bonotto, two of the firms portrayed, are manufacturing companies located in the North-East, a region that is recovering from a devastating economic crisis. The recession tsunami operated a Darwinian selection of existing firms, so that only those who had an international vocation, meaning points of sale or factories abroad in addition to exports, or had placed all their bets on innovation, have managed to survive. In these companies, innovation is about the technology, design, product functionality and status that are to be communicated and commercialized to the buyer/consumer, often via online selling channels. The strategic behavior toward innovation is in the interest of firms in all industries, from machinery to textiles and furniture, including small firms, as long as they are part of a long value chain.

The success of industrial districts similarly depends on innovation. For instance, a small company that produces molds for large groups has progressively improved its supply, moving from providing molds to design to acquiring a foundry to produce pre-series fusion molds, testing them and ensuring the inclusion of the plug-and-play mold and thus the boot into production. So a company that produces machines for the duplication of keys, exported all over the world, has produced a touch-screen version that has outplayed the competition, expanding the market to non-specialist buyers such as supermarkets.

The share of manufacturing in the region's GDP is 25% including construction, well above the national average. Tertiarization is also affecting this area, as knowledge-intensive business services are taking a larger role. These are SMEs operating in ICT, prototyping, marketing and public relations. They are important actors for local development because they transfer knowledge to client firms and support their innovation processes. They are often co-producers of knowledge and innovation. At the same time, also in the North-East the nature of ownership and control is changing. Next to family companies that have weathered the crisis thanks to felicitous generational successions, there are companies bought by foreign capital from exhausted family owners, who had lost their willingness to take further business risks. There is also new entrepreneurship in high-tech industries. Overall, the North-East is thus converging toward the industrial structure that exist in other regions of Northern Italy.