LIBRI DI ENZO RULLANI

The growing complexity of competitive environment and technological change fosters the use of individual and collective intelligence in productive chains. Science, machines, computing algorithms, formal procedures are not the more suitable means for managing this type of competitive situations. Since increasing productivity is based on a greater role of individual and social entrepreneurship, local cultures and societies are moving towards the frontier of innovation. But they cannot fulfill this difficult role if local productive systems fail to renew their identities and products. Only strong innovation strategies that can overcome past legacy and aim at new shared projects. New ideas are joint with investments and risks, that are a private but also a social concern. So, decisions about new local identities and investments need a serious change of the power structure that exists in many local systems. Continuity is not enough. Some form of discontinuity in productive structures and in political and social institution is required.

Immaterial work and the society of knowledge ABSTRACT: In pre-modern age, work is inscribed in the domain of necessity, whereas in modernity it becomes cognitive and explorative work, and produces knowledge. Modern work is both self-organizer (it moulds a subjectivity which is selfgenerated through experience) and reflexive (it is done by human beings who are, above all, in search for a meaning). Therefore, instead of proclaiming the end of work, we should realize that there will always be a demand for (cognitive) work, even in high mechanized societies; in fact, its role consists in explaining the growing complexity of life and production. However, this will be possible only if there is a new policy based on investment on intelligence and aimed at integrating personal capitalism with social involvement.

Le imprese ad alta tecnologia e del terziario avanzato sono importanti attori dello sviluppo locale, ma talvolta restano protagonisti “nascosti”, mancando di uno specifico monitoraggio. Questo primo studio esplorativo analizza i caratteri strutturali e i comportamenti imprenditoriali delle imprese del settore, operanti in provincia di Arezzo. L’analisi mira a comprendere possibili traiettorie di sviluppo futuro del sistema locale e intende segnalare eventuali interventi istituzionali a supporto.

Il progetto e-Cluster, iniziativa del piano regionale Veneto Net Goal, ha risposto alla necessità di individuare modelli, idee e pratiche eccellenti per migliorare la competitività del sistema-impresa Veneto, facilitando da una parte lo sviluppo di aziende abilitanti che supportino il passaggio dal modello di distretto tradizionale a quello di e-Cluster, e dall’altra moltiplicando il numero di aziende che si avvalgono dei servizi avanzati offerti da tali aziende abilitanti.

La globalizzazione, la sfida con Cina e India, le nuove tecnologie faranno sparire i distretti italiani? Oppure i distretti italiani cambieranno ancora una volta "pelle"? E se la cambieranno, quali nuove strade percorreranno? Questo libro vuole rispondere a due importanti esigenze: da un lato capire quali sono i possibili percorsi evolutivi degli oltre 160 distretti italiani e, dall’altro, visitarne alcuni, raccontare le vicende dei loro protagonisti e scoprirne dei nuovi.

The idea of social capital contains two opposite terms: (private) capital and (public) society. This duality is condemned to remain unsolved in the modern society. In fact, modernity uses knowledge as a productive force, and knowledge needs both these two sides: cognitive property (private rents and investments), on one hand; and social sharing (open access, cognitive reserves), on the other. Hence, social capital is a necessary feature of modern economy. We have utilized social capital in the last 30 year to overcome the crisis of fordist production. Small firms and industrial districts, in Italy, made a deep use of the social capital produced by history and tradition, and embedded in local systems. But today we are facing another problem: how to produce the new social capital that is needed for a post-fordist social organization of production. We are looking for a new form of modernity, suitable for a more complex world. And the social capital, that is to be produced in the future, ought to be designed to fit this more complex economy and society.