An Italian company becomes a case study at Harvard

Alessandro Benetton back to Harvard. The entrepreneur, who studied in Boston in the 1980s and obtained a master’s degree from the prestigious university, returned to those desks last November 8th for a special event: the presentation of a case studies on the path of Editionthe family holding of which he has been president for 4 years and which under his leadership has begun a process of change and strong discontinuity which affects all the main companies of the group (Mundys, the new infrastructure parent company and global leader in sustainable mobility , Abertis, Aeroporti di Roma and Avolta created from the merger of Autogrill and Dufry).

Accompanying him was his son Tobias21 years old, who studies mathematics and physics also in Boston, but at Brown University. «It was nice to have him with me» said Benetton, «It was an opportunity to share both personal memories and the great passion we both had for technology and innovation».

The analysis was carried out by a pool of professors and researchers from the University who, through a series of visits and interviews carried out directly in the field, they studied the evolution of the Edizione group for over 6 months, from the point of view of business and corporate culture.

Interviewed by Ambra Angiolini on RTL the entrepreneur he explained what discontinuity means to him: «I had a career outside the family group until a few years ago; the times I approached the family business we didn’t find each other, perhaps because I was looking for this discontinuity which I have instead had the opportunity to demonstrate in the last three or four years but always with respect for the values ​​of the founding fathers. In our case, internationality and attention to social issues, just think of the campaigns of our historic brand.”

He then explained that for him discontinuity also and above all means gender equality: «I have always believed it should be lived, like other guiding principles such as attention to the environment and social sustainability, not as an obligation or a politically correct direction, but as a real opportunitydemonstrating that having this type of attention is not an additional cost but is a way of seeing things that can create value, including economic value. Our very satisfactory results are also the result of a new way of looking at things.”

Alessandro Benetton, in addition to Tobias, also has two daughters, Agnese, 24, and Luce, 17 and all three children have chosen to live with him since 2020, after the separation. «I had to deal with all aspects of their lives, sentimental, educational in the sense of training and schools, health. And this beautiful relationship continues today, we talk every day. Living with them so intensely has made me a better man; for example, the commitment to gender equality was also inspired by my daughters.” He has clear ideas about how to concretely pursue it within the company. «I like to think of the example of the orchestra director who chooses the best or the best one by listening only to the sound. This should be the end point. We as a group concretely pursue the objective in the new hiring of top management figures between the ages of 30 and 40, and at Mundys too we are in the right direction: out of one thousand seven hundred managers, one third are women with roles absolutely similar to those of men”.