Dear Friends of Italian Innovators, on June 24, 2022, I had the honor of being the closing speaker at the Superyacht Design Festival, organized in Milan by the Boat International Media Company. My presentation, entitled The Italian Way. What Makes Italian Design Unique?, explored the cultural elements that lie behind the success of contemporary Italian design in the context of Italy’s global leadership in superyacht manufacture.

The lecture gave me the possibility to organize and clarify some of the main content threads of this year’s work with Italian Innovators. I share it today as a synthesis of this path and a thank-you gift for all the ideas and insights that I gathered in dialogue with so many of you. I hope you will enjoy it! Watch the eiposde here.

The Italian Way. What Makes Italian Design Unique?

* Industria (industriousness) and cultura (cultivation): the 2 concomitant faces of value creation

* Italian #design is not "Made in Italy". What makes on object Italian? What does "Italian" add to it?

* The origin of Italy's distinction. From an incomplete industrialization to a unique industrial model

* The Italian vs the Anglo-salon approach to #innovation

* Objects as #storytelling devices: from decoration to personification. The object as a living actor

* How can an #object (or a story) achieve eternal freshness? The parallel path to creativity of the writer and the #designer (the models of originality of Dante, Petrarch, and Collodi)

* Design as a #philosophy of gesture: the empowerment of objects from use to lasting meaning

* The boat as a complex #architecture of meaning and a synthesis of functionality and storytelling

* Three assembling sites of Italian #yachting: the fabbrica, the court, and theatre

* Yachts as #opera houses, combining different "works" in a unique synthesis of industry & culture