The new industrial triangle, experts say, is the one that groups the area from Varese to Bologna and, from there, to Pordenone.
So the Enterprise City Festival, which already boasts a spring edition in Vicenza and an autumn edition in Bergamo, completes its reach by settling in Piacenza, a hub city between Milan and Bologna for discussing the unknowns of recovery.
First edition on Friday, September 14: guests include Di Vico, Vacchi, Bonomi, Baban, Saldutti, de Bortoli, Mazzucchelli, Massini and champion companies. After the April edition in Vicenza – and two months after the one in Bergamo, which will give life to its second edition at the end of October – it is up to Piacenza to become the third “symbolic” place where to open the debate on the development prospects of the economy and territories: in the city straddling Lombardy and Emilia, a special edition of the Festival Città Impresa will in fact be held on Friday, September 14. If in Vicenza the underlying theme is that of the relationship between business and territory, while in Bergamo the focus tends to be more on issues related to business development, Piacenza is a candidate to become the venue where the theme of flows (of goods, people, financial) will be in focus. Placed immediately upon the return from the summer break, the objective of the Piacenza edition, promoted by ItalyPost and Confindustria Piacenza, in collaboration with the Municipality of Piacenza, will in fact be to outline the possible functions of an area dominated by the theme of logistics but, at the same time with an interesting industrial fabric that runs between Milan, the lower Lodi area up to Parma and Reggio, a city with which Piacenza has started a territorial marketing path through the establishment last year of “Destinazione turistica Emilia.” The city’s role will be discussed at the opening – at 11 a.m. at the Sala dei Teatini – moderated by Giangiacomo Schiavi, with Piacenza Mayor Patrizia Barbieri, Industrialists’ President Alberto Rota, and sociologist Aldo Bonomi of Consorzio AAster.
But the Festival’s task will also be to draw the lines of an economic-political debate that will certainly be ignited in the coming weeks. Indeed, at the center of the discussion will be the prospects of the next economic phase as seen by the small and large players in the business world, both from the champion companies of the area straddling Emilia and Lombardy, and from the bigwigs of the confindustries of the three regions. The protagonists will therefore be entrepreneurs from companies such as Univel, Musetti and MO.TRI.DAL; but also the president of Assolombarda Carlo Bonomi, of Confindustria Emilia Romagna Alberto Vacchi and the former president of the Small Industry of Confindustria, Alberto Baban from Veneto. Leading this meeting will be Dario Di Vico, journalist for Corriere della Sera. Also dutifully dominating the day will be the anniversary-which will be celebrated the following day (Sept. 15)-of the 10 years since the fall of Lehman Brother’s, the global financial giant whose collapse marked the beginning of one of the biggest global economic and financial crises. How the world has changed, how finance has changed, how politics has changed from that moment to the present will try to tell the story, at 6 p.m. in Piazza Cavalli, Ferruccio de Bortoli and one of the wittiest men in finance, Marco Mazzucchelli, led by Nicola Saldutti, editor-in-chief of Economics at Corriere della Sera.
Concluding the festival on this theme, at 9 p.m., in the splendid setting of Piazza Cavalli, it will be the turn of Tuscan writer and playwright, consultant to Milan’s Piccolo Teatro, Stefano Massini, a well-known television face and star on La7’s Piazzapulita, as well as a veteran of the resounding success of the London transposition of his The Lehman Trilogy, directed by Oscar winner Sam Mendes at London’s National Theatre, where it was greeted by a very long standing ovation at its debut and sold out until Oct. 20. After receiving the French critics’ prize in 2013, Massini, Italy’s most widely performed playwright abroad, therefore comes to the Piacenza stage where he will tell Festival audiences about Something about the Lehmans, described by The Times as “theater at its highest level.”
The complete Piacenza Città Impresa program is available at www.festivalcittaimpresa.it, where you can register for the events of your interest.
Promoters’ statements
“I hope that the experimentation we wanted to do with a shortened edition of the Enterprise City Festival can meet the interest of entrepreneurs and professionals, but especially of young people, as has been happening for some time now in the more established editions in Vicenza and Bergamo,” comments Filiberto Zovico, founder ItalyPost and promoter of the Festival – Here, in Piacenza, we aim to offer a stage for the needs of a territory and a business world that, from Modena, Reggio Emilia and Parma to the provinces of lower Lombardy, is a fundamental junction of a productive North that needs to be listened to in order to continue to make its contribution to the development of the country in terms of income, tax contributions, jobs and widespread wealth.” “Hosting the Festival Città Impresa constitutes, for Piacenza, an important opportunity to reflect on the area’s economy, analyzing its strengths, needs and specificities through the authoritative and competent gaze of the distinguished speakers who will be taking the floor,” stresses Patrizia Barbieri, mayor of Piacenza. “It will also be an opportunity to build and strengthen relationships, promoting the realities of excellence on which we count locally and, at the same time, turning the spotlight on the need for strategic innovation that all industrial sectors must be able to adopt today. I would like to thank Confindustria for having promoted, together with ItalyPost, this initiative in our city as well, the Chamber of Commerce for its support and all the partners whose contributions have made it possible to kick off an event, which I hope, will have a future over time.” Adds Confindustria Piacenza President Alberto Rota: “We welcomed with particular interest the proposal made to us by Mayor Patrizia Barbieri and ItalyPost to support the organization of this important initiative that will turn the spotlight on some particularly important economic issues, starting precisely with the vocation of our territory, which in recent years has seen the development of many new activities alongside an industry that still remains the driving force of the provincial economy. In May, Italypost itself, through the pages of Corriere della Sera, gave us a snapshot of the state of our industry by singling out 8 Champions enterprises, some of which will be guests at the roundtable discussion on Friday afternoon, the 14th. They are the tip of the iceberg of an industry committed to maintaining firm positions in an increasingly competitive global context, thus ensuring jobs and development for its territory. I am sure that the presence of qualified guests will be able to provide participants with very useful insights at a very particular economic and political moment. The hope is that this initiative can grow and consolidate in Piacenza as well, as it already does in Vicenza and Bergamo. I believe that having opportunities for in-depth study and discussion of economic issues can be of great use in better understanding dynamics that are now of supra-national dimension.”
