Carlo Massarini: “We have entered the twenty years that will change our lives”

Turin. Sunday April 25 weekly appointment with Startup Economy – everything that makes innovation to tell Italy it is innovating. This year will also be chaired by Carlo Massarini, writer, journalist and TV presenter, Francesco Sacco, digital economist at the University of Insubria, and SDA Bocconi, a technology expert and champion of several startups. In the scheduled eight sessions, they will meet managers, entrepreneurs, innovators and visionaries who are creating new businesses, products and solutions in all sectors of the economy. A picture of Italy changing and resisting the difficulties caused by the epidemic.

Carlo Massarini, how has the epidemic affected these facts?
“The digitization process has accelerated. It looks like it goes back twenty years when companies started discovering the potential of the internet and we had already started talking about digitizing public administration. However, the country has moved to the islands of excellence, some things have gone very well and others remain lagging behind, and compulsory social distancing in the past year has made us discover that digitization is the only way to continue living, working and staying in touch. “Large companies brought their workforce home and saw that they were working, and found other facts – such as the Italian school – which was not up to date – both in terms of technology and staff training, more uncomfortable.”

The controversy surrounding my father was already static.
“The teachers who simply conveyed the usual front lesson time they spent in class in front of the camera found themselves extremely uncomfortable, as did the students, highlighting the school’s lagging digital. Digital transformation is fundamentally a cultural shift, which requires commitment, an open mind and a willingness to learn new things and leave old methods behind or combine them with the tools of technology. There we realized that the national digitization plan had not been implemented in these 20 years. The money from the redemption fund, from what I’ve read, will also be used to get us to make this leap. ”

Where should we look?
“In the USA this year, a series of trends that have been around for years exploded: The most exciting are electric cars that have hit the world at large, as car manufacturers accelerate the transformation. There is now a great public awareness, especially among young people but not only, about the fact that special attention is needed in environmental sustainability. With the electric motors sector, other sectors find new impulses, such as batteries, recharging, energy storage … ».

But it seems to me that the infrastructure today is not suitable for the electricity market, don’t you think so?
It is a market that was finally launched this year and thus inevitably disrupted. But the investments are huge. In episode two we will also deal with this topic and we will interview with Francesco Staras, CEO of Enel, a company that has also performed well internationally. But electricity is not the only interesting trend to follow, there is also artificial intelligence, robots, genomics that will allow genetic surgery, financial technology that changes the way money is used by removing material, 5G. All directions that, I don’t know if they are “By coincidence, it definitely appeared this year. It is a time when a lot of things are happening so it is interesting to talk about it. We might be in the twenty years that change our way of life again.”

This acceleration has also changed the way we entertain: You can now operate your TV from home, as well as the radio, in a very graceful and simple way. Is it really a new era?
“The same applies to the other sectors that we have been talking about. It was understood that the technology that we created makes it possible to live in a different way but we have not exploited it in that sense. Having to all stay home transformed the paradigm and unleashed a series of new approaches to reality that changed it. For example, the ability to make calls from home that isn’t entirely ideal has changed the way TV works. It was understood that this could also be done by letting go of something in quality. Last May, we were the first to make a program entirely out of our home, launching a new model. Shall we come back To some extent. People have understood that it is better to call from home or office without moving, saving economy, time and environment. Less travel and less carbon dioxide emissions into the air, at least until we turn into electricity. ”

Will we be able to access the paradox that together we will find less and less for work and more and more for social contact?
“I agree. Even if the processes are slower than we can imagine and anyway I think there will be an integration: you will likely work a little from home and a little no, and you will also have more free time to see friends. By reducing travel times, you will have more.” “Free time, but it is not a viable model at the moment. We are like 1999 when the potential for change brought about by the Internet was sensed, but it wasn’t that great. As Joe Stromer said, the future is not written.”

Is it correct to say that the entire startup world is moving towards environmental sustainability?
“There is sensitivity in this sense, and I think younger generations have a clear sensitivity as a goal of life. In the past, there was also an interest in respecting the Earth, and I think for example about the war against nuclear energy in the 1980s and 1990s, but from Greta Thunbrg onwards, there has been A clearer public awareness Companies are keeping this new concept of concern for the environment and social issues well in mind: if they want to have a path in the stock exchange, they must also have in terms of sustainability and corporate policies. Because these are the aspects that investors are now paying special attention to. “It has become a major factor, if you do not have this sensitivity, it will not be well appreciated. This affects all companies large and small.”

So it is no coincidence that the Ministry of Environmental Transformation was born.
“This is a request that comes to us from Europe. One of the positive aspects of the European Union is that it forces us to follow benign policies and we hope Minister Singolani will be a guest soon. We have to modernize as a country, but in doing so we just have to win.”

Never want to go back to creating a music show?
“Yes, music is still my passion, but on TV it doesn’t make me do anything like that. They are only interested in big events like Sanremo, Primo Maggio or the X Factor, and the desire to talk about music is lost, perhaps because the new generations have more of a “disposable” attitude than mine. I always thought that music and its protagonists should be told as I did on my latest show of this genre. Snow boiling. In this regard, May 12 will be the fortieth anniversary of its debut Master of imagination I am in contact with RaiPlay so that hundreds of episodes are available again on the platform. ”