HERITAGE AND TRAINING
Research and training benefit from corporate heritage. The reworking of a company’s historical materials is an extremely effective tool, not only for brand promotion but also for developing training programs, supporting research projects, and enhancing employer branding.
These actions aim to transfer the company’s cultural values to both internal and external audiences, specifically through activities designed to showcase all aspects of the company’s culture, work environment, corporate values, and growth and career opportunities.
Through internal training, enhancing one’s historical heritage helps clearly communicate the company’s evolution, values, and identity, thereby fostering a strong sense of belonging.
In fields such as fashion and design—typically sectors of Made in Italy—the historical heritage has long served as a source of inspiration for developing new products and simultaneously as the ideal “place” to transmit special skills, identity traits, and the unique corporate culture to collaborators, suppliers, staff, clients, and all who interact with the company.
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND NEW PROFESSIONS
In this context, for a long time now, the gap between the academic world and the professional world has been evident. High schools and universities provide an increasingly diverse array of diplomas and degrees, yet there remains a substantial unpreparedness among those entering the workforce for the first time. Genuine synergy between academia and business is rare, and Italian companies are resigned to training the necessary professional profiles internally (with considerable time and resource expenditure). The Made in Heritage project represents an exceptional innovation in this regard.
Heritage represents “the added value of corporate history”—the narrative that identifies and highlights the most notable pages of a company’s past, those that make it what it is today and what it will be tomorrow. In fields such as fashion and design—typically sectors of Made in Italy—the historical heritage has long served not only as a source of inspiration for developing new products but also as the ideal channel to transmit special skills, identity traits, and the company’s unique culture to staff, suppliers, and especially customers. While some exclusive Made in Italy processes can be replicated, and many of our ingenious ideas have been or will be imitated by “low-cost” producers, no one can ever reproduce that inimitable sense of history and exclusive tradition, which represents the true “core essence” of Made in Italy.
Heritage is therefore an essential element in enhancing corporate identities and national brands; however, the reworking of a company’s historical materials must necessarily begin with research and training—a methodical and contextual study of historical documents. It is clear, then, how corporate communication objectives must include collaboration with “cultural actors,” and why heritage is the ideal “place” where culture and business meet.
A NEW TRAINING MODEL
Today, especially in the post-Covid recovery climate, there is the opportunity to be part of heterogeneous yet synergistic networks composed of universities, specialized higher education centers, institutions, foundations, and forward-thinking companies. In these privileged contexts, educators and business leaders agree on common training objectives and jointly design study paths that are genuinely useful for both students and companies.
Students following these programs are made available to companies at zero or minimal cost (internships or apprenticeships), for a flexible period and with a clearly defined business objective. After the training period, and after having tested the students “in the field,” companies can decide whether to hire them with strong incentives and tax benefits. Similar opportunities are also available to companies wishing to train their internal staff.
Companies as Key Players in the Future of Youth
In short, participating companies become part of a group of true “cultural actors” who help return elements of the common heritage to their community, creating culture while also generating employment and supporting youth and female workforce participation. All these activities, already valuable in themselves, significantly contribute to enhancing the prestige and credibility of a company or brand.