2017 Triple I

T R I P L E I Italian Imaginative Innovators 2017

Conversations with Italian business leaders at the forefront of innovation

Concept

Italian Imaginative Innovators (Triple I) is a programme run by the Embassy of Italy in London. The initiative was launched in 2016 with the aim of showcasing successful Italian entrepreneurs who have demonstrated particular vision and innovation. It consists of a series of conversations between entrepreneurs – start-up founders, CEOs, and managers – and journalists who are experts in economics and finance, exploring the entrepreneurs’ ambitions, the challenges they have encountered, the creative solutions they have found and the insights they have gained along the way.

The Italian private sector has demonstrated remarkable resilience over the last decade. Many of its businesses have not simply survived the global economic crisis but used it as an opportunity to redefine and nurture their strengths and develop flexibility, emerging stronger than ever and punching well above their weight on international markets. This has been a major factor in Italy’s status as the second-largest manufacturer in Europe and the fifth-largest in the world and its position as the second-largest European exporter.

Italy’s private sector continues to evolve, driven by global growth and by improvements in production processes, expansion of exports, effective corporate governance and greater openness to the financial markets.

The 2017 Triple I series presented a diverse cross-section of entrepreneurs and managers representing companies of varying type, size and turnover but with one thing in common: an ambition to achieve excellence and international competitiveness through innovation.

Pasquale Q. Terracciano, Ambassador of Italy to the UK December 2017

Innovating in the cables industry Valerio Battista and Sarah Gordon 25 January 2017, Embassy of Italy

Valerio Battista is the Sarah Gordon has CEO of Prysmian Group, worked for the Financial a world leader in the Times for over 15 years energy and telecom in various high- cable systems industry. responsibility roles and With over 20 years’ is currently its business experience in the editor and on of its industrial sector associate editors. She (including with the previously worked in Pirelli Group), Battista emerging-markets fund led the merger of management for Prysmian and Draka to Citigroup and as an create the Prysmian economic and political Group, the most analyst for Foreign & profitable corporate Colonial. group in its industry.

Outline of the event

The Prysmian Group is the global leader in the manufacture and installation of cables for energy and telecommunications. It has 91 production plants in 50 countries, 17 research and development centres and over 19,000 employees. It owes its success in large part to the broadness of its shareholder base, a model that is virtually unique in Italy.

The story of Prysmian illustrates the importance of expansion through consolidation and acquisitions. The company inherited Pirelli Cavi in 2005, and expanded following its flotation on the Milan stock exchange in 2007, acquiring Draka, a Dutch cable manufacturer, in 2011.

The value of technological innovation in helping the company keep pace with its customers’ demands was also clear. “We just dress copper,” said Valerio Battista, the CEO of Prysmian. “But the demand for data transfer in cables increases by a factor of 10 every year. So there must be some innovation even in dressing copper.”

The conversation also touched upon the uncertainties that the private sector has to deal with, arising from the Brexit referendum, the election of Donald Trump, and the evolving dynamics of the Chinese market, and how these uncertainties require companies to adopt strategies that can be adapted to a wide range of markets and circumstances.

Cable networks: the world’s nervous system

About 99% of global internet traffic is carried by underground and undersea cables.

The total network of undersea telecommunication cables covers more than 885,000km

Submarine cables are laid using special cable- laying ships

Pry-Cam ® partial discharge measurement and monitoring system

Innovative BendBrightXS solutions Afumex® bend- fire-resistant resistant developed cables optical fibre by Prysmian

Intellitent Protolon system for monitoring cable wear

SAPEI, which connects Sardinia to the Italian mainland, is the deepest submarine cable in the world. It was manufactured by Prysmian.

Competing in the industry of transport components Paolo Scudieri and Angela Antetomaso 23 February 2017, Embassy of Italy

Paolo Scudieri is the CEO Angela Antetomaso is a of the Adler Group, the television presenter with second largest player Class CNBC, the Italian- worldwide in designing and language channel of CNBC. developing components She previously worked at and systems for the CNN International in New transport industry. He took York and at Bloomberg TV in over as head of the family New York and London. She business in 1992 and led its provides daily financial expansion. He has received updates to Italian television numerous awards for his channels including Tg5, work, including the 2016 EY TG.com and SkyTg24. She Entrepreneur of the Year also sits on the board of prize, in recognition of his directors of the master’s contribution to the growth of programme in management the company, research and at Cass Business School, City innovation. University.

Outline of the event

The Adler Group began life in 1956 as a small laboratory in the family home, where Scudieri’s father manufactured polymers. In the years that followed, the company expanded its production to include new rigid polyurethane materials for padding and insulation, and it began exporting its products.

Scudieri became CEO in 1990 and, driven by his passion for automobiles, he led the expansion of the company’s product range to cater specifically for the automotive and aerospace industries. Under his leadership, Adler became a group of international renown in an extremely competitive sector.

Campania, the southern-Italian region in which the Adler Group is rooted, is rarely accorded the recognition it merits for manufacturing distinction and innovation. As a world-renowned manufacturer, Adler offers an excellent model and inspiration for entrepreneurs from the south of Italy seeking to move into international markets.

The automotive sector: a hotbed of innovation Trends to watch for:

Predictive analytics For efficiency in Internet of supply chains, things fleet management Web-enabled and vehicle vehicles design

New safety 3D printing standards Replacement Connected and parts will be automated vehicles just a click will mean a need to away protect vehicles and infrastructures from being hacked

Digital infrastructure Custom- Automotive designed companies will vehicles become more Manufacturers efficient through will produce technological vehicles in optimisation batches of 1

The lesser-known side of southern Italy: tech excellence and innovation

Leaders in transport tech

•Masmec: Robotics for the automotive and biomedical sectors •Blackshape: Carbon-fibre light aircraft •Mermec: Diagnostics, signalling and asset management for the railway industry

Start-up culture

•EggPlant: Bioplastics from wastewater through zero- impact process (Best Project 2014 Dublin Web Summit) •Nextome: Indoor positioning software •LifeBand: Ankle band for remote monitoring of individuals at risk of falling (AXA Italia South For Tomorrow finalist)

A booming aeronautics industry

•Campania is Italy's largest employer in aeronautics •The sector created 1,500 new jobs in five years in Puglia alone •Together, Campania and Puglia account for 31% of the country's turnover in the sector

Setting benchmarks in fashion and design Giulio Cappellini, Maurizio Pecoraro and Daniela Agnelli 15 March 2017, Istituto Marangoni – London

Maurizio Pecoraro is a fashion designer. He joined Gianni Versace’s creative team while still a student and in 1989 Versace appointed him as artistic director of Alma. In 1998 he debuted his first signature collection and in 2001 he oversaw the launch of the Valentino Roma line.

Giulio Cappellini trained as an architect and is currently the art director at the Istituto Marangoni as well as being the art director and visiting professor at a number of other arts institutes around the world. He is also the founder of the Cappellini furniture brand.

Daniela Agnelli is a fashion editor- at-large for the Telegraph Magazine as well as being a fashion consultant and creative director. She works for publications in the UK and the US, including Marie Claire, InStyle, Red and Harper’s Bazaar. She was fashion director for the launch of Vogue Arabia.

Outline of the event

This Triple I conversation, which coincided with Italian Design Day, was held at the London campus of the Istituto Marangoni, a design and fashion school. It was the first Triple I event in which the speakers were artists and the first to be held outside the Italian embassy.

The participants discussed entrepreneurial issues in furnishings and fashion, an alternative approach in industries where it is traditionally the creative aspects that are emphasised. In particular they noted the rise of e-commerce as a business model in the fashion sector.

They also discussed the value of artisanal tradition in Italian products, highlighting the importance of creating original products rather than succumbing to the temptation of trying to appeal to a broader customer base by producing cheaper but lower-quality goods.

Italian fashion and design: championing tradition, leading innovation.

With an estimated value of $2.3 trillion, if the fashion and design industry were a country, it would have the seventh-largest economy in the world.

The apparel, fashion, and luxury sector outperformed the market over the past decade, exceeding even technology companies.

The global revenues of fashion ecommerce are estimated to have been $408 billion in 2017, with an expected growth of 73% by 2022. Yoox Net-A-Porter Group, an Italian unicorn founded by Federico Marchetti, is one of the world’s largest online fashion and luxury retailers.

Exploding demand in fashion, design and luxury goods driven by rapidly growing middle classes in emerging markets

Top five emerging middle classes (2015-2020) 120 -

100 India China Indonesia

Philippines 60

Nigeria 40 2030 period % period 2030

0 8000 10000 12000 14000 16000 18000 20000 22000 Median income real growth over the 2015 the over growth real income Median Forecast median income in 2030, US$ per household

Driving digital innovation Riccardo Zacconi and Massimo Sideri 26 June 2017, Embassy of Italy

Riccardo Zacconi is the Massimo Sideri is an author co-founder and CEO of and journalist and is the King, a social-media and innovation editor for the mobile-gaming company Corriere della Sera. He has made famous by the game reported on the financial Candy Crush Saga. He has scandals in industry and worked in Germany for the football and on the socio- Boston Consulting Group economic consequences of and in London for Spray, an technological progress and internet startup which was relationships between later bought by Lycos humans and artificial Europe, and for Benchmark intelligence. He won the Mi Capital. In 2003 he co- Faccio Impresa prize for his founded King.com and in articles on start-ups. He is the 2015 he sold King Digital director of the Galileo Entertainment to Activision Innovation Festival in Padua. for $5.9bn.

Outline of the event

Whereas the previous Triple I events focused on sectors that are well- established in Italy – energy, communications, transport and fashion – this event showcased a cutting-edge industry which has a much lower profile among Italian entrepreneurs: creative high-tech.

Diverging from the approach of the previous events, which showed how even mature sectors still offer openings for innovation, this Triple I highlighted the opportunities offered by a relatively new, fast-moving industry.

Zacconi and Sideri discussed the enormous potential of Italian start- ups, which enjoy plentiful funding, creative ideas and risk capacity. They observed that by harnessing these resources, the start-ups can target international markets, even in the early stages of their development, not just following technological progress but shaping it.

Italy: centuries of technological innovation behind us…

1700

Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) Electric battery

1800

Antonio Meucci (1808-1889) Telephone

Giovanni Caselli (1815-1891) Fax machine

1900 Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) Radio transmission

Pier Giorgio Perotto (1930-2002) Personal computer

Federico Faggin (1941-) Microprocessor 2000

Leonardo Chiariglione (1943-) MP3 music format

... and a digital renaissance ahead of us.

Italy was ranked second by Technology Report for tax policy supporting innovation, thanks to the government’s Industry 4.0 plan.

40% of Italian manufacturing companies use 3-D printers for fast prototyping, and 25% use robotics in the manufacturing process

Milan, one of Europe’s most inspirational smart cities, leads the way in integrated and sustainable urban ecosystems.

SMEs: a pool of entrepreneurial talent Marco Albasini, Giovanni Cogliati, Maurizio Galante, Rino Liborio Galante and Angela Antetomaso 10 November 2017, Embassy of Italy

Marco Albasini is Giovanni Cogliati Maurizio Galante COO and Qualified is sales manager is the general Person (QP) at and ownership manager of OMP Lameplast, where member at Mechtron Spa, a he is responsible Elemaster, where leader in for contract he is responsible customised manufacturing, R&D for business mechanical and the and regulatory development and electronic department of the marketing solutions, and the Group and for the activities for COO of OMP release of Europe and the US. Group. He has 20 pharmaceuticals He is part of the years’ managerial and medical second generation experience in devices. of the family to run global enterprises. the company.

Rino Liborio Galante is the Angela Antetomaso is a founder and CEO of financial journalist and a Metalgalante, a concrete-mixer presenter with Class CNBC, as manufacturer. Having begun well as a member of the board his career as international sales of directors of the master’s manager for a cement-mixer programme in management at manufacturer, he has almost 50 Cass Business School, years’ experience in the University of London. industry.

Outline of the event

This was the first Triple I event to feature multiple entrepreneurs, all of them heads of SMEs, who each described the challenges that their businesses had encountered and how they had overcome them.

Although each company’s experiences were different, an element emerged that was common to all of them: an assertive approach to globalised production, taking it not as a challenge but as an opportunity. Their strategies included, for example, outsourcing production to China, the US and India. It became clear from the discussion that this openness to global markets is a key factor in creating opportunities for growth.

SMEs play a crucial role in Italy’s productive fabric, given their long history of offering extremely high-quality goods and services, in sectors ranging from mechanics and agroindustry to jewellery and fashion. Their constant innovation and reinvention of themselves has made them extremely resilient, allowing them not just to survive but to thrive throughout the crisis that Italy is finally leaving behind it.

SMEs: Italy’s economic powerhouses

STAR,

the segment of the Italian stock exchange reserved for midsize companies with capitalization of under €1bn,

consistently outperforms the market.

Italy’s economy is overwhelmingly driven by SMEs, many of them family-owned. They operate on a much larger scale than comparable companies in many other countries, frequently entering the international market, with remarkable success, at an early stage of their development.

Italian midsize companies: an evolving global footprint

Rest of world 1998 6% Asia 4% Central and South America 10%

North America EU 10% 64%

Rest of Europe 6%

2015 Rest of world 5%

Asia 19% EU Central and 50% South America 8% North America 11% Rest of Europe 8%

Food, as only Italians know how Luigi Scordamaglia and Francine Lacqua 21 November 2017, Embassy of Italy

Luigi Scordamaglia is the Francine Lacqua is an CEO of Inalca S.p.A., a award-winning anchor and European leader in the editor-at-large for Bloomberg meat packing and Television. She has distribution sector with a interviewed numerous high- turnover of €2bn. profile public figures, including David Cameron, He is also the president of Christine Lagarde, Mario Federalimentare, the Monti and Mario Draghi. federation representing the Italian food and drink She co-hosts "The Pulse with industry. Guy Johnson and Francine Lacqua," covering top He sits on the boards of international business, numerous bodies economic and market- promoting Italian trade moving stories from abroad. He also has Bloomberg Television's prominent roles in London studio. associations representing the meat industry at Italian She also hosts "Eye to Eye," a and European level. special series where she talks to top CEOs, entrepreneurs He holds a PhD in and public figures as they veterinary science and a ride the London Eye, one of postgraduate certificate in the world’s most iconic ferris corporate finance. wheels.

Outline of the event

This Triple I event coincided with Italian Cuisine Week, an initiative run by the Italian government to promote Italian food culture around the world.

Italy’s status as a food superpower is universally recognised and was the basis for the theme of Expo 2015, hosted by Milan: “Feeding the world, energy for life”. Expo 2015 gave rise to the Charter of Milan, which outlines the importance of food security and sustainability and citizens’ rights and duties in this regard.

The food and drink sector plays a pivotal role in strengthening relations between Italy and the UK: Italy’s exports of food and drink products have increased steadily in recent years. The food and food- tech industries have a particular need for a combination of tradition and innovation in order to remain globally competitive, a skill in which Italian businesses excel.

The conversation highlighted the importance of SMEs in the food and drink sector and Federalimentare’s role in helping these SMEs, the backbone of Italian productive capacity, compete at a global level.

Despite the maturity of the food and drink sector, there is still enormous potential for technological innovation, as evidenced by the development of new technologies and satellite agriculture which have increased yields while saving resources. Such innovation and vision is particularly vital in light of the growing global demand for food, which will have to be met with ever fewer resources.

Italy: a leader in food…

In 2017, Italy’s food and beverage exports were worth €40bn Target for 2020: €50bn

Italian food exports in 2016 (€ million)

Coffee, tea and spices Vegetables Cocoa and cocoa products Meat Oils and fats Dairy products Preserved fruit and vegetables Fresh fruit Pasta products Wine, beverages and vinegar

0 2000 4000 6000 8000

… and food tech

The food-tech business in Italy is worth €135bn

One in five food- packing machines sold around the world is made in Italy

Improve nutrient absorption

Enhance flavour

Italy’s fast-moving nanotechnology Control industry develops traceability of products solutions to:

Increase shelf life

Improve hygiene

A strategic role in the energy sector Marco Alverà, Nick Butler, Peter Mandelson and Alessandra Galloni 6 December 2017, Embassy of Italy

Marco Alverà is the CEO of Nick Butler is a visiting SNAM, a European leader in professor and chair of the the construction and Kings Policy Institute at Kings management of natural-gas College London. He infrastructure. He is also previously spent 29 years managing director of SNAM with BP. He has also served as Rete Gas and interim head senior policy adviser to the of SNAM Industrial Assets. British prime minister, He began his career in chairman of the Centre for private equity and M&A and European Reform, and in 2000 founded Netesi, treasurer of the Fabian Italy’s first broadband ADSL Society. company.

Peter Mandelson, a Alessandra Galloni is the member of the House of global news editor at Lords, is a former European Thomson Reuters and trade commissioner and currently oversees coverage British first secretary of of Southern Europe. She state. He holds high-level previously worked for the managerial and advisory Wall Street Journal. She has positions in a number of won a number of awards for organisations. her reporting.

Outline of the event

This Triple I event focused on sustainability in the energy sector. The subject was particularly topical, as the COP23 conference and the presentation of the publication World Energy Outlook had been held the previous month in Bonn and Vienna respectively.

Initiatives such as these, complemented by reports from individual companies, such as the Global Gas Report 2017 by SNAM, illustrate the crucial importance of the energy sector and the key role that it plays in ensuring a sustainable future.

The conversation highlighted Italy’s pivotal role in the European gas market and in ensuring a sustainable energy future in Europe, as well as the active role played by both the UK and Italy in the process of decarbonisation.

Italy: not held back by a lack of fossil resources

Despite having no fossil resources, Italy is the fifth most productive manufacturing Eni, Italy’s largest economy in the provider, is in the world. global top 10 of natural-gas distributors in terms of quantities and market capitalisation.

Italy enjoys a strategic position at the crossroads between the Russian and North African pipelines.

The GALSI pipeline, due to be completed in 2018, will carry gas from Algeria to Italy.

17.1% of Italy’s energy consumption came from renewable sources in 2015…

…and 45.9% of the country’s electricity consumption was from sustainable production…

…while its proportion of electricity production that came from solar energy was the highest in the world.

Italy is home to Europe’s largest photovoltaic plant, in the province of Rovigo

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Acknowledgements

Triple I - Italian Imaginative Innovators Conversations with Italian business leaders at the forefront of innovation

An initiative launched and promoted by Pasquale Q. Terracciano, Ambassador of Italy to the UK.

Concept, organisation and development: Dante Brandi, Head of Economic Office and Alternate Executive Director for Italy at the EBRD

A special thanks to the Economic Office permanent and temporary team for their role in organising the 2017 series and producing this Triple I booklet:

Emilio Binst Lara Milwid Andrea Caravita di Toritto Francesco Peserico Guglielmo Caggiano Maria Grazia Quagliarella Matilde Durazzano Salvatore Sabatino Angelo Formiggini Alice Tumidei Arianna Gentilini

With special thanks to:

Tancredi Intelligent Communication Ltd www.tancredigroup.com

Find us on:

http://www.amblondra.esteri.it/ambasciata_londra/en/ambasciata/eventi- contenuti/triple-i

https://www.facebook.com/ItalianEmbassyLondon

https://twitter.com/ItalyinUK

https://www.instagram.com/italianembassylondon/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/133872064@N08/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtbisZfL4zI0QiFNgjV2kGw/videos

2017