After the 2008-2009 global crisis, it took Italian industry eight years to return in 2016 to 2007 levels in terms of labor productivity. It did better on the share of overseas sales; sadly she never went back to it industrial production and capacity utilization. It has built this response with its own strength, with product, process, design, organization and marketing innovations, with public incentives but without industrial policy guidance. Industry 4.0 was only announced in 2017 and never implemented in its authentic inspiration.
Even after the global oil crisis of November 1973, when we talk about the end of the golden age, it took Italian industry eight years to take the path of productivity and technological innovation in 1981 (Law No. 46 is from February 1982 ). It would therefore seem that eight years is the inherent response time and that the recipe is always the same: innovation and productivity. If things don't get worse this time, Italian industry will overcome the fall of recent months only in 2028.
Between 2008 and 2019 employment levels have all in all been saved. However, it was the work that paid a high price it falls back on forms of low qualification and is underpaid compared to the European average. The exceptions are Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia Romagna. The strongest fall is in Sicily, Calabria, Puglia, Sardinia and Campania (chapter 25).
The response between 2008 and 2019 was divided into extent and with different strategies in the various sectors: there are those who recovered earlier (food, chemicals, household appliances, electronics, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, mechanics), those who recovered later but better (construction of means of transport, rubber, the furniture industry, metallurgy, the fashion system), those who never ( publishing and printing, oil industry).
ln just two months of 2020, from February to April, the production index lost more than 50 percentage points (from 104,4 to 60,4). The fall was almost twice as large and 6 times as intense as last time (31 points in 14 months, between February 2008 and April 2009). The fall was small in some sectors (food, pharmaceuticals), almost 100% in others (automotive). During the closure of the factories, thanks to layoffs, there was no such overt liquidity erosion. The balance sheets of listed companies have not suffered too much. As of June 2020, production recovered to 96,0. In the second half of the year, the demand, albeit to a small extent, will recover, business confidence is recovering, but the losses for the year will still be heavy.
Three basic differences emerge compared to 2008-2009. This crisis is grafted onto profound changes, the signs of which were already felt at the end of 2019. There was talk of the end of the globalization age, it was perceived that for individual national economies it would no longer be possible to rely on exports as a panacea to compensate for shortages and internal imbalances. The sudden stop of the world has dramatized things. Furthermore, in Italy labor productivity is lower not only because digital technology is just arriving, while other countries have already implemented it and have progressed, but above all because (this is the thesis of two economists) the merit is not equally recognized by us. The way of life has changed. The lockdown seemed a temporary thing, but customs quickly turned upside down: where to work and study, how to eat, what to wear, how to take care of yourself, indeed how not to get sick, indeed how not to make the world sick, how to respect the territory and the environment, indeed how to prevent breakdowns, how to have fun, what TV to watch, what to read, how to get around and where to go. Until now there was no overall response, a new overview.
Uncertainty has increased beyond belief. Many entrepreneurs wait, not as many venture. ln Italy the number of large companies has decreased. Small and micro companies are now the vast majority, they do not have a technostructure to carry out research and innovation, therefore they need a technology transfer to better benefit from the priority and transversal supply chains (chemistry, new materials, biotechnologies, microelectronics, robotics, artificial intelligence ).
Looking to the future, this volume goes beyond the classification of the industry by product sectors, starts from an overview and develops it. it emerges a natural, unplanned, inextricable intertwining of traditional processes, supply chains and digital technologies.
Governing the territory means treating it preventively, reducing the risk of natural events. By risk we mean the cross between building vulnerability (whose safety measures would involve 23 million citizens and cost 93 billion) and the dangerousness of the site. Today it is possible to observe the territory and the atmosphere, acquire data from remote sensors (satellites, meteorological radars, ground monitoring networks), transmit and process them with numerical models, promptly announce extreme hydrometeorological events.
Governing the territory means restore infrastructure, whose materials are deteriorated because the daily use is much more onerous than foreseen in the project. New structural monitoring technologies and predictive algorithms based on artificial intelligence or neural networks make it possible to monitor the works, diagnose problems, intervene in a targeted and preventive way. The duration of the materials decreases with the gaseous emissions caused by transport. One tomorrow it will be possible to produce durable and not very permeable concretes to external agents.
The extended water supply chain includes the modernization of collection and distribution infrastructures, the valorisation of sewage sludge as an energy source, the installation of rainwater collection basins for industrial uses, a water quality monitoring system purified water and put it back into circulation (chapter 21).
In furnishing, the question is: will the house host the domestic-working hybrid, or offices will be shaped into home offices, aggregation centers according to limited needs? Answer: The companies that promote the home office will win, transforming offices into top meeting centers, with improved productivity thanks to: empowerment of personnel, culture of digital systems, integration of technologies.
Consumers have learned how important lifestyle and diet are to reduce the impact of an infection. The food industry has launched a communication campaign for them and directs their purchases. This improves the profitability of many foodstuffs. The initiative Farm to Fork wants to halve pesticides, fertilizers, antibiotics in agriculture and aquaculture by 2030, as well as dedicate a quarter of agricultural land to organic farming.
Patients used to buy medicines in pharmacies close to work, today in those near the house where, driven by isolation, they tend to consult the pharmacist more assiduously. Even the "no vax" want to know more about vaccines. Artificial intelligence simulates structures of new molecules. It will become possibleuse of drugs through devices that, once ingested, will transmit information about the molecules to a wearable system (weamble system). The data will be downloadable on the attending physician's PC. In emergencies, the logistics with blockchain models will be able to bring medicines to the patient in record time.
In the fashion industry, the raw material of leather items can be recovered from food waste. ln the future, in tanning, chromium will be replaced by natural substances, for example from olive oil vegetation waters, the disposal of which in turn is a major environmental problem in the Mediterranean. A company from Catania already produces fabrics for sustainable fashion from by-products of orange pressing. It is a high quality fabric in the fashion brand.
With the Olympics and the European Football Championship missing, advertising sales in 2020 collapse. Increase pressure from Netflix and Amazon. In 2021, the preferred viewing platform will be online TV. The traditional one will enter a crisis but will still be central. The TV industry will complete the transition to digital, but the contents will have to change. European co-productions will be sought, as Sky Italia and Mediaset are attempting. Pay-TVs will invest more in technologically advanced 0n demand services.
La sustainable mobility it guarantees movement, access, communication, commerce, relationships, without sacrificing human and environmental values. There are four strategic lines: a) green vehicles, b) automation and network connection of vehicles, c) infrastructures, d) services. It is feared that the automotive crisis will reduce investments in electrification, both those in the construction industry and those in public infrastructures. The crisis also penalizes the metallurgical industry, which however benefits from many innovations (automation and digitization of plants, additive manufacturing, powder bed fusion).
Investments in infrastructure for energy vectors concern electricity but also hydrogen, and include fast charging stations along the highways and hydrogen filling stations. Hydrogen production and transport are already proven, so it would be easy to industrialize recombinant innovation in energy and mobility. Second and third generation biofuels, produced from residual biomass or waste, would be an immediate alternative to electricity, also because they can be integrated with the logistics and infrastructure already present. They would allow the exploitation of well-tested propulsion systems, sometimes difficult to replace, for example aircraft.
Logistics will play a central role in sustainable mobility. We have already seen how in recent years success has gone to those who have been able to combine material flows and data flows. One day, it will be possible to cut costs by integrating network technologies, warehouse automation, autonomous vehicle driving.
In 2020 world ranking of competitiveness Italy is in 44th place out of 63 countries, terrible .It comes after Kazakhstan, Latvia, Indonesia, Poland, Chile, Portugal, Spain and Slovenia (IMD, Lausanne). With the fourth industrial revolution, digital is a necessary though not sufficient condition for the production system to progress. A country can also improve on many fronts, but today without digital it doesn't even begin. Well, in 2019 Italy was in 4th place in the digital competitiveness ranking. It weighed the school, ranked 57th out of 63 countries.
According to other sources (DESI, 2020), for the diffusion of broadband, Italy is in l7th place among the EU states, has infrastructures below average and pays them more. It is also behind on the coverage of the very high capacity fixed network (VHCN) with 30%. Instead, it is well prepared for the advent of 5G (frequency assignment). Due to the cultural limitations of the users, lack of skills in the PA, cumbersome procedures, Italy is last in the standings in the submission of forms via web applications. In the integration of digital technologies, Italy is not positioned well (score just above 30, much below the European average of 43). We are not even good at cloud computing services, and worse for the ability of companies to develop solutions for big dutu. Third last in the development of e-commerce. We are fourth last in basic software knowledge. Cyprus is also doing better. A tragedy.
Italy emerges lacking in knowledge and skills, a country "without knowing". Among those OECD, our country has the third highest share of young people who do not work, do not study and do not attend a training course (NEET). For years there was an operation disinvestment in training and research. The 57th place of the Italian school in the world ranking of 63 countries, the scarcity of digital skills, the lack of serious selection of teachers in the school, the scarce recognition of merit in the public and private sectors are the consequence of low investments in public education and the lack of attention to those who come from a disadvantaged socio-economic background. Yet 52 years ago, the liberalization of university access and the establishment of university settlements in provincial centers had helped to overcome social inequalities. Too bad, because Italian researchers are competitive. 15% of the projects financed by the European Research Council were presented by Italian researchers (46 out of 312): an excellent result, if we consider that the Germans only surpass us by two units and that the French and the British are much further behind.
Industry is one of the engines of the country. In an open, non-autonomous economy, industrial policy takes care of the general conditions of competitiveness so that companies can use them to try their hand. Since resources are scarce, it is necessary to find the "string of the skein" of its problems. If, to silence the industry, you compensate it with bonuses for each category of instances, all the nodes remain.
This work was undertaken in April 2020 by a group of 23 teachers from 6 faculties of Sapienza, with a positivistic approach to reading the data and discussing it. The departing group was unaware that the goal would become to find the key to the problem. In the end this was identified in the pressing need for medium and small industrial companies to access the various priority technologies, of which digital is the glue and transferr, and to do so in their interest to progress, compete and make profits, making them enjoy them fairly shareholders, workers, creditors and stakeholders.
Over the years, technology transfer has been done by countless subjects throughout the country, with interesting results, but meager looking at the rankings. Now digital is presented as the new panacea, inexpensive, immediate, usable by all. Small businesses do not have a technostructure or sufficient knowledge of the subject. An authoritative suggestion is that the transfer should be top-down, organized not by small companies applying to benefit from it, nor by those who own digital technologies but ignore the priority supply chains, but rather by those who are at the head of these supply chains and hold the knowledge to be transferred to businesses via digital.
As a conclusion of this work, the hypothesis is proposed that the government elaborates two projects in parallel: a) A multi-year, executive one, with some activities in series and others in parallel, articulated on several ministries, projected on the times of a couple of whole legislatures, for the recovery of the country's competitiveness, so that it tenaciously rises in the double world ranking of general and digital competitiveness, with progressive objectives and pre-established times. b) A second project, with transitional costs borne by the State, to be started immediately, aimed at transferring technologies from supply chains to industrial companies thanks to digital technology. The project would offer all companies of all sizes (provided they meet the minimum) the opportunity to participate. An effective communication campaign and an assembly of subjects able to work immediately, in direct contact, would be useful. In agreement with the head of each priority supply chain (public or private), a competent and already operating body would do training for a certain time to a multitude of technicians, strictly selected on merit, defined as technological missionaries. Once trained, these missionaries would be placed in a public and transitory structure, like salesmen in a real commercial network, they would visit the small and medium-sized enterprises participating, offering them the technologies most suited to the case in point. The businesses, having calculated the economic convenience, if convinced, would each hire some missionaries and they would place them in their business organization. Missionaries would integrate technologies and industrialize them. All with an initial cost of training and commercial guidance paid by the State, but without any subsequent bonus or public incentive. Thanks to the work done in recent months, Sapienza University of Rome is available to immediately develop the feasibility study, carry out the tasks of project manager, selection, training and commercial guidance of the missionaries.
