Made in Italy: enhancing corporate heritage to shape the future.

Leveraging one's past is a powerful distinguishing factor.However, not all companies yet know how to transform their entrepreneurial heritage into a strategic resource.

IfForbesoFortunehad they drawn up rankings in the late Cretaceous, the iguanodon, a large herbivorous lizard weighing around three tons, would probably have ranked in the highest positions. Appearing on Earth at the end of the Jurassic, the iguanodon was a global phenomenon and remained on our planet for approximately 79 million years, a completely enviable period of time for a species like ours, which up to now has lived for no more than 300 thousand years (and with serious doubts on the chances of future survival). Probably, reasoning about the secret of the success of iguanodonts, the commentators of the time would have made fun of some Cretaceous novelties, such as crocodiles, a fashion destined to have no future... (iguanodonts became extinct 66 million years ago, while alligators and crocodiles are still among us).

Even in the business world the principles oftoo big to failor oftoo old to failreceive sensational denials from history. Sears, Roebuck and Company, for example, began as a mail order company in 1892 and, in less than a century, established itself as the largestretailersof the United States, emblem of the superior management capacity ofUS managerial capitalism,at least according to the reconstruction of its organizational history elaborated by the Harvard historian Alfred D. Chandler. In 2019, Sears declared bankruptcy and, after troubled ownership issues, the brand survives today in a handful of stores scattered across the USA and Puerto Rico. On a slightly more trivial level, a simple internet search is enough to discover how collectors compete for gadgets produced in 2000 to celebrate the 150th anniversary ofLehman Brothers(the involuntary comedy ofpayoff“A tradition of innovation” appears irresistible today).

Nevertheless, there is a frequent tendency among business historians and scholars to identify the prolonged presence in the rankings of the largest companies in the world as a demonstration ofentrepreneurial skillsor superior management, destined to guarantee a bright destiny in the future too.

In fact, high values ​​measurable in parameters, such as turnover or assets, demonstrate consistency between what the company offers and what its reference markets require. Furthermore, dimensional growth is a process that takes place over a long time; therefore, it involves the ability to respond effectively tochallengesdifferent and changing over time. On the other hand, thelongevitybrings with it the ability to accumulate over timeresources and skills, a process that is difficult for younger competitors to replicate.

Other scholars – such as, for example, Emanuele Sacerdote – have also noted how companieshistoricalhave a tendency to pursueobjectivesthat go beyond the short-term perspective and how they aspire to pursue thelongevity,understood not so much as a merely quantitative element, but as 'having a superior and better life than the competition.

However, atrack recordfull of successes can also prove to be a limit, a ballast that prevents one from quickly adapting to changes in the context or even from perceiving that these changes are taking place (cases of this kind are now classics of management training courses, such as for example the rise of Japanese manufacturers at the expense of giants such as Xerox, Caterpillar and American and British motorcycle manufacturers).The concept that we intend to highlight here, therefore, is not so much that of how companies born 100 or 200 years ago are the embodiment of a superior and automatically sustainable model, regardless of the changes that await us in the future, but of how along storybehind one's back can become aelement of advantagecompetitive and strategic, if consciously understood and exploited.

History or heritage?

Every company, like every person, has its own story; however, this is not always known to others and is not always passed down to future generations. Behind every victorious ruler who left his name on monuments and books, there is a host of soldiers, farmers and artisans whose names we have lost even memory of. This is the difference that scholars usually draw between the factual reality of the past, the facts as they unfolded, often no longer knowable in their completeness, and the narrative that perpetuates the memory of those facts and transmits it. History andheritage(sometimes the term is also usedlegacy) are not identical concepts.

As far as businesses are concerned, there is also a further level ofcomplexity: a company may have lost its historical memory, but, even if it has maintained and transmitted a link with its past, it may not consider it as a relevant part of its identity and itsstrategy.Patek Philippe and Tag Heuer are two watch manufacturers born in western Switzerland around the same time (in 1851 and 1860 respectively). Both are therefore historic companies, but while Patek Philippe considers its history and the very concept of tradition and heritage as an essential component of the brand, Tag Heuer identifies itself more with a successful image linked to the world of sport, in which the historical component has limited relevance.

The English scholar John M.T. Balmer used these two cases to explain the difference between the concept ofheritage brand(Patek Philippe) ebrand with heritage(Tag Heuer).

Heritage unites the past, present and future of a company

The fact that a component ofheritagehas an important place in the strategy and identity of the company, it is therefore not an automatic process associated with the age of the company, but rather it is the desire to affirm abondstrong that goes beyond time and unites in onecontinuumpast, present and future.

Paradoxically, there may be relatively young companies with greaterawarenessof its history compared to centuries-old institutions. History Factory, an agency specialized in the management ofcorporate heritagefounded by Bruce Weindruch in 1979, for example, it was responsible for the celebrations for the tenth anniversary of Microsoft Word (in 1993) and a complex project created in 2005 for Chiron, a biotech company founded just over 20 years earlier and eager to pass on its history, before being incorporated into a multinational pharmaceutical company.

Using one's history as an element of competitive advantage is therefore oneconscious choice, deliberate and, above all, stable over time. Hastily organizing an event or publishing a banal monograph to celebrate an anniversary is compared by Weindruch to the choice of giving chocolates or flowers to a loved one by those who lack creativity (or have simply remembered the anniversary at the last moment). As we will see later, an effective, rich and complex use of thecorporate heritagerequires the creation of specific resources and skills that are permanent and integrated with the rest of the company.

Marketing scholar Fabien Pecot has also explored how the process of building thebrand heritageis a dynamic and multi-faceted process, which involves both subjects within the company and in the context in which it operates.The historical legacyof a brand, in fact, derives from the testimonies (both material and immaterial) of its past that the company has preserved, but their assimilation is a consequence of what the current management knows about its history and how many of these elements are perceived today as relevant foridentityand the goals of the company (echoing Weindruch's motto: “Start with the future and work back”).

But in the composition of the heritageheritageborrowed elements are also includedfrom the environmentin which the company operates, even if they lack a real connection with its specific history: think, for example, of the reference to the centuries-old Italian artistic tradition or to a Renaissance inspiration frequent in some fashion brands that barely exceed a hundred years of life (such as, for example, Gucci or Ferragamo).

Butthe environmentalso acts actively on the formation of identityheritageand its consequences: the perception of history widespread in society, for example, also conditions the way in which the company looks at its past (some decades can be perceived as positive-negative, iconic-uncomfortable). Furthermore, the reference topastthat the company incorporates into its values, enhancing its attributeslongevityand ofcontinuity'inter-temporal', is welcomed and interpreted differently by different segments of consumers: the retro packaging of Colman's mustard (a company founded in Norwich in 1814 and currently a brand of the Unilever group) can trigger nostalgic components in a British consumer of a certain age, but could leave a twenty-year-old English or an Italian consumer completely indifferent. Furthermore, the vintage images displayed in the Norwich shop-museum could have a disturbing effect for a vegan audience (for example, the historic slogan "Meat needs mustard" and the omnipresent bovine 'trophy') or those originating from one of the colonial areas ofexBritish Empire (Colman's was a supplier to the Crown and the armed forces and often used these elements for advertising purposes).

Heritage as a competitive advantage in Made in Italy companies

Napolitano, Garofano and Riviezzo (2018) explored how history can be translated into competitive advantage with specific reference to some Italian cases, in the awareness that, within the sectorsMade in Italy,the components that refer to thecultural heritageet alcorporate heritagerepresent an important element of shared identity and differentiation compared to other national cases.

In the cases studied by the Campania research group, it emerges how history can be transformed into anarrationeffective in promoting a corporate message both through more 'ordinary' tools (publications, videos, web content) and through the company's products themselves, or by enhancing the places associated with the activity or in events aimed at strengthening long-term relationships andhistorical-cultural heritageassociated with the company.

The way in which the past becomes a relevant element in the strategies of the present, however, is the result of a deliberate and conscious process that starts from an analysis of theidentity of the company,from the formation of a vision of which theheritageis part of the creation of management and control tools that translate this vision into practice.

In some cases, small businesses, in which owners or founding families have an active and predominant role, the process has characteristics ofspontaneitywhich are a consequence of the involvement, even personal, of the owners.

The creation of two grappa museums linked toPoli Distilleries,a company active since 1898 in Schiavon (VI), for example, is the result of the maturation and research path of Jacopo Poli who, starting from the 1990s, led the family business to evolve from a poorly characterized product widespread only on a marginal local market to a brand focused on a premium segment, with a national presence and good positioning in some foreign markets. Through the creation ofmuseum exhibitionassociated with the Bassano store (1993) and the one located at the Schiavon production unit (2011), Poli has made available to the public the results of personal study, the collection of memorabilia and publications and research promoted at the company's urging. The result is to establish a sort of assonance between the company story and the ancient history of distillation, with specific references to the Venetian cultural tradition (grappa actually has more recent and popular origins). Alongside this first evocative journey, the company valorises the (few) surviving documents that concern its specific story and reconstructs the evolution of modern grappa, from its origins in the nineteenth-century agricultural world to its evolution to an industrial-artisan dimension of which Poli remains one of the few surviving representatives, after the irruption of industrial mass production in the 1950s and 1960s.

Telling the corporate heritage

The personal commitment of Jacopo Poli, creator and animator of the activities in the areaheritageof the company, embodies that indispensable function ofenhancementedefenseofcompany historical heritagethat the first reflections relating to thecorporate heritagehad labeled asbrand stewardship(Whoopset al.). A direct and personal dimension remains possible in small-sized companies (Poli had, in 2023, just over 15 million euros in turnover), but takes the form of complex permanent structures in larger companies, as demonstrated by the case of the valorisation ofheritageof one of the most representative Italian companies,Piaggio(1.3 billion turnover in 2023).

The first program ofenhancementof the company's past developed during the 90s under the direct impulse of the young president Giovanni Alberto Agnelli. The project gave rise to a complex organism made up of a mixed participation foundation (1994), a museum and a historical archive (opened to the public in 2000). The task of research and scientific supervision was entrusted to Tommaso Fanfani, professor at the University of Pisa. The initiatives launched at the Pontedera (PI) plant were born in a period of metamorphosis, in which the reference to the past was sought as a stimulus to affirm thecompany capacity,born in 1884, to reinvent and renew itself, creating innovation even in quite different fields (shipbuilding, aeronautics, motorcycling). The unitsheritagePiaggio today work closely with managementmarketingof the company, they manage amuseum areaof 3 thousand square meters and a heritage of over 5 thousand folders ofarchive,also addressing the considerable complexity of dealing with the various brands subsequently acquired by the group (Moto Guzzi, Aprilia and Gilera) with different and characteristic locations and experiences.

'Digest' the story

The cases of Poli and Piaggio highlight quite clearly how an exploitation ofheritageefficient has both cultural values and strictly economic purposes and involves significant and continuous investments. Marco Montemaggi, in what was probably the first study dedicated toheritagemarketingof Italian companies, has summarized in a particularly effective way the multiple levels on which corporate archives and museums should operate. The units responsible for preserving the company's historical memory certainly have institutional tasks that aim to protect and open to the public those which, although privately owned, can be considered to all intents and purposes as cultural assets. There are also notable values for the purposes ofcommunication,both addressed to consumers and stakeholders and to business partners (a corporate museum can serve as a sort of 3D business card of the company), but also, turning internally, as a constitutive element of the corporate identity.

At a higher level, these units represent a reserve of materials to which the company can turn to search for analogies and stimuli in the past that come into playresonancewith some of the priorities of the present. According to Fanfani, quoted by the sociologist Marco Montemaggi (2007): "Preserving one's memory does not mean looking for recipes for the future, but it means accumulating a wealth of ideas, experiences, a container of testimonies thatenrichsthe added value of the company itself helps it to be a protagonist in the present".

Thatarchivescan be a place where one can rediscover unexpected elements of one's forgotten past and sometimes more coherent with one's future objectives than recent history is a concept also forcefully expressed by Weindruch's field work. Furthermore, a concrete case was documented by the young British researcher Ian Jones, who reconstructed the contribution of the historical archives of the Barclays bank in responding to the image crisis following the scandals of 2008-2012 through a rediscovery of the Quaker roots of the institution.

Integrate the idea of heritage permanently

For this function to unfold fully, however, thehistorical heritageof the company must be organized and studied with specific scientific and professional criteria and not distorted to respond to a system ofinformation retrievalsimplified in which the answer is already contained in the way in which the question is asked. With extreme clarity, Montemaggi illustrates the mediation function carried out by the units that deal withcorporate heritage, capable ofdialogueboth with the professionals of historical research and with the different units of the company, in order to carry out a 'digestion' function: "Exactly like the digestive function of our body, the structure of the museum searches, saves and reuses the history of the company in 'new energy'. Without this intervention this history 'would not exist', since it would not be usable [...]. This procedure, in addition to making the material usable for the museum, has an important operational impact: making the historical material available which can be traced back into the arteries of thecompany corpus”.

If the evolutionary success of the crocodile over the iguanodon is linked to the ability to adapt to changes in the ecosystem and to find survival strategies suitable fordifferent habitats, even for businesses the ability to change - and not seniority in itself - is a source of competitive advantage. If markets, products, structures and values change incessantly to adapt to a context that is constantly evolving, so too does the process that fuels theheritagecorporateis affected by different stimuli and objectives: even the units responsible for interfacing with the company's past therefore undergo an 'evolutionary pressure' that rewards the responses that best adapt to the new contexts, without losing the call to continuity, which represents a constitutive element of the narrative based onheritage.

This process can only be managed by a rich, complex and aware approach that manages to walk in a difficult balance between contingency and continuity. Only by permanently integrating the idea ofheritageinstrategyof a company it is in fact possible to develop the ability to process in a different and creative way elements which, by their nature, are static, because they are linked to an experience now distant in time and crystallized in objects and documents, without betraying historical verisimilitude or falling back into the trap of 'presentism'.

Bibliography

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