Art, Design and Innovation
a meeting in Venice for Biennale Innovazione 2015
In order to talk about future, the organization decided to start the Biennale Innovazione talking about Art and Design. The entrepreneurs invited were Perazza, founder of Magis Spa, and Urbinati, founder of Foscarini Spa, both representing “firms without factory”. While the President of Bonotto Spa, Giovanni Bonotto, represented the “slow factory” (216 employees and 40 millions of revenue, with 2014 cycle being the best one in more than 100 years of company history).
The starting provocation was offered by M. Bellocchio “is innovation the adaptation to the changing reality?”
“No” was the firm answer of Urbinati and Bonotto, who presented the history of their companies underlining how the entrepreneurial decisions have always been guided by the need of catching the imagination firstly, and secondly of captivating the consumer. Many times art has been mentioned and referred to as the means which allows to broaden the horizons, it is identified in the production of a unique and extremely refined object and it becomes available to the public thanks to design and serial production. Perazza stressed out that at the basis of what has been recognized as design over the years there must be a good idea and that only the work of an experimenting team can generate a quality product. Designers and firms must be considered as an indissoluble pair in the production system. Urbinati also highlighted that quality Italian design can even be ideated by foreign designers, and thanks to the technical knowledge of an extended territory, creativity and business experience, it becomes a product.
Bonotto sees the causes of the recession in a process of saturation of products meant for the public, which can no longer be conceived as masses that can be dominated with the twin strategy product/communication, but as consumers. This is the only way to avoid soccumbing to a market made of products which are good, but not captivating. The rediscover of the culture of the hand-made will lead us out of this moment, and that’s what “slow factory” does: it helps us rediscovering hand-crafted work.
