MADE IN HERITAGE

For some companies, heritage is a regular asset for the development of their products. Consider, for example, the use of patents, design projects, fashion collections, and the extensive documentation inevitably generated through company activities.

Some of them, among those most celebrated as Made in Italy and embedded in the collective imagination, owe their success to their ability to draw on their own past.

The Italian industrial and manufacturing landscape is made up of a vast range of companies that are protagonists of important stories that are little known, often unexplored, hidden in archives, in the memories of key figures, or in private collections.

Made in Heritage addresses these companies with an original proposal to gain an advantage from their own history.

The Challenge of Digitization

Today, only what can be searched online truly exists. The challenge of the project is to bring to light present and past content and create new material by digitizing the company’s historical heritage through the best available technologies.

Digitization processes and internet technologies make it possible to transform the analog world of documents and objects—witnesses to the company’s history—into the virtual world of the web, where it is easy to reach a wide audience to whom the company’s cultural and historical values can be promoted.

This enhancement of heritage, otherwise hidden, which makes new content accessible and available, can achieve the following objectives:

  • the archive as a corporate asset;
  • the archive for research and development, and as a carrier of know-how;
  • the corporate museum as a tool for identity, education, and experimentation;
  • the strengthening of branding.

The turning point in the digitization process lies in technologies, above all artificial intelligence algorithms, which play an indispensable role by simplifying the conversion from physical to virtual and the creation of online search engines.

 

The Model

The MIH project proposes an exclusive, visionary, and sustainable business model for the enhancement of a unique and accessible cultural heritage—an identity-building tool for all company stakeholders, capable of returning knowledge and values to local and national communities. Supported by a pool of qualified companies with experience in the digitization and enhancement of corporate historical heritage, businesses will be able to implement this entrepreneurial project dedicated to their history, brand, products, and key figures.

Areas of Application

Enhancing corporate history goes beyond the boundaries of the company itself. The benefit for brand, communication, and sales is combined with the opportunity to initiate and foster collaboration projects on a global scale, as bringing content to light generates new partnerships and broadens the stakeholder landscape. Additional possible areas include social and cultural responsibility, corporate history and identity, research and education, as well as corporate archives and museums.