Emma Bonino also believes that a “Europe solely founded on austerity is not possible“, as the EU “must be and do something more”. She is convinced that Italian government’s goal remains the one of creating the ”United States of Europe“ and a system ensuring “greater results and savings too, in the sectors of defence, research, major infrastructures and, obviously, foreign policy”.

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The new helicopter will be produced by HeliVert, a joint venture between Russian Helicopters  and AgustaWestland, and it has been estimated that deliveries will start in 2016.

The Russian one is certainly a promising market for helicopters production. Russia currently ranks third globally, and the industry is booming. Five years ago nationals helicopter industry producers made only 75 aircraft  a year, but today their number is 290. However, to keep its position in the global market Russia needs Italian technologies.

Although not many additional details about the new model have been revealed, aiming at further promoting its future chopper, HeliVert joint venture also announced that the first AW139 helicopter assembled in the Tomilino plant have successfully performed its maiden flight, and proudly emphasized that HeliVert just signed a new contract with Exclases Russia for the supply of five more AW139 helicopters.

AgustaWestland has achieved growing success in the Russian market in recent years with the most modern range of dedicated products for corporate transport and utility purposes. Over 40 AgustaWestland new generation commercial helicopters have already been sold in Russia in just ten years, with over 30 of those sales being achieved in the last five years. More than 20 AgustaWestland helicopters are in service in Russia today. AgustaWestland is also expanding the availability of support services available to local customers, thanks to an increasing number of authorized service stations providing maintenance and spare parts for its growing customer base across the nation.

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Let us get to know on which grounds the aspiring social entrepreneurs will try to convince the board that they are the real game changers:

- Comuni-Chiamo is an app that aims at enhancing the communication process between citizens and the local administration. Thanks to it, people would be able to forward requests for intervention, attaching pictures if necessary, and to raise red flags regarding issues which could easily slip outside the scope of attention of the municipality. This request would immediately reach the person responsible for dealing with the subject.

- DiarIo tries to solve another compelling communication problem, the one that exists among high schools, students and parents. The app is a digital diary, which gathers all the paper-based communications, the lecture and test timetables, the grades and much more, making it quickly available to the students and their parents. An example of “frugal innovation”, it would have nearly zero costs for the individual institutions.

- Pedius allow deaf people to make phone calls. In the two way communication process, one party would write a message which would be immediately translated into voice for the other party, who would then be able to reply on voice, with his or her words automatically reported into a text message. Such a setup would slice the cost of a live interpreter, the system currently used by the public administration and private service providers.

- Skillbros is a knowledge virtual marketplace. Springing from the lack of institutions where people can learn unconventional skills, which are not taught in universities but are nonetheless proving increasingly useful in the current work environment, it allows anyone who has a competence in a specific area to teach it live or online through video courses and written material.

- Youmove.me provides users with the best combination of means of transport to get to a specific place. It combines any flight, train, car-sharing, car-pooling, bike-sharing transportation option to build the most efficient itinerary available so that the user does not have to check different search engines separately.

Now, if startups are mainly here not only to identify and solve new problems, but also to put an end to relatively old, unresolved ones, S5 Tech is on the right track. Its Ceo, Gabriele Del Sorbo, former H3G manager, tired of feeling the same deja-vu sensation any time he stepped into a supermarket, has already received a €5mln financing for the production and installation of digital labels in several supermarkets. The device, which costs approximately €6.5, allows the retailers to pay back the investment in 8 to 14 months, thanks to the savings it helps generate in terms of paper and personnel.

Going one step further, the biggest advantages in the adoption of such a technology come from some subtle uses that can be made of it. First, prices can be adjusted much more frequently in order to react to competitors’ strategies or to set new ones. Second, following the recent trend that sees supermarket customers growing hungrier for… information, digital labels can interact with any smartphone and provide details regarding, for example, the nutritional values and the ingredients contained in each product, or anything related to the company that puts it on the market.

Looking for new investors willing to provide additional €10mln to the project, Del Sorbo aims at entering the US market, where he would target open-minded clients and enlightened retailers, which make it the best field to test future trends before they start affecting Europe. 

Italy already counts 47 sites in it, from the Royal Palace in Caserta to the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi,  from the Palladian Villas in Veneto to the early Christian monuments in Ravenna, from the Eolie Islands to the Dolomites. However, this year Italy might add two new beauties to the list: the Medici Villas and gardens, and the giant Etna Volcano.

The first site includes 12 villa complexes and two gardens owned by the Medici family in Italy’s Tuscany region near Florence, where a huge number of artists, philosophers and literati were hosted from the 15th to the 18th century.

The second site is the world’s most active volcanoes located in eastern Sicily in southern Italy, whose activity has records dating back over 2,700 years.

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A modern and globalized company, Autogrill has diversified its activities. Besides the typical restaurants shaped as bridges over large roads, in 1999 it has entered in the market of concessions for catering food in airports and railway stations, through the acquisition of well-established companies in Europe and America. After a decade of expansion in various other fields, since 2007 Autogrill started to gradually integrate its retail activities and concentrate exclusively on the two businesses in which it enjoys global leadership: food & beverage and travel retail.

A further step towards focussing on core activities was announced at the beginning of the month, when a project of partial demerger was approved. Autogrill decided to transfer to its wholly owned subsidiary World Duty Free the entire shareholding in World Duty Free Group SAU, the Spanish company leading the Group’s Travel Retail & Duty Free business. Apparently, the demerger was the result of a clear industrial strategy, as the formation of two distinct groups devoted to specific businesses is expected to enable each of them to improve the performance by leveraging their own particular strengths. In addition, the move shall allow the group to expand more internationally: ten years ago, its cash flow came mostly from Italy, now the Italian market counts only for 13% of it, while the share of emerging economies such as Turkey, China, India and Brazil is growing. The demerger is expected to come into effect at the end of September.

The first reactions form the stock market were positive and the strategic shift by Autogrill has led analysts to predict further increases in the value of the company’s share in the coming months.

In Rome, the Alumni Association of Luiss University has recently launched a mentoring program for graduates. This program offers a tailor-made assistance to each student, giving them the chance to regularly meet professionals, managers, human resources experts, and share knowledge and experience with them.

Luic university in Castellanza has opened a placement service to support their students when they start looking for a job. Many universities have eventually realized that career-days, although useful, are not enough to support young and inexperienced workers in the labour market. Career-days are precious to clarify students the variety of positions they can be offered and the profusion of sectors in which they can be employed, but they definitely do not offer a day-by-day support all along the tough and competitive recruitment process.

It is true that Italy, like many European Countries, is still far away from offering its university students the chance of “working for them”, that is the opportunity of getting some “real” working experience before graduation. However, a few exceptions are enough to let us consider this idea as a promising one.

In Rome, Roma Tre University has launched a “legal clinic” where a group of thirty students, both graduates and undergraduates, regularly offer legal assistance to clients that need to face a lawsuit or to file a formal complaint but cannot afford a real lawyer for that. Luiss University, instead, has recently opened EnLabs, which has been advertised as an open incubator and accelerator supporting co-working. Housing 50 workstations for 20 startups, EnLabs has established itself as a pioneer in innovation and entrepreneurship in Italy, and it is open to local and foreign students interested in finding a stimulating place where to develop and shape their ideas into a successful start-up.

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The world’s largest hotel comparison site, trivago, has recently published a report showing the impact of GDP slow down on hotel average prices in Italy (and in several other countries currently experiencing serious financial troubles, such as Spain, Greece and Portugal).

It is a mater of fact that in the Euro-Mediterranean region tourism is one of the key variables of GDP growth. As far as Italy is concerned, it is interesting to notice that while in the period 2011-2012 the global financial crisis did not have the huge impact on tourism that many experts were expecting, everything started changing in early 2013.

In 2011-2012 the average of hotel rooms’ prices remained almost the same: 130 euro for a double room in 2011, and 129 in 2012. This quotation was by far the highest in the region, where other countries’ fees were around 100 euro.

In early 2013, instead, Italian hotel rooms’ prices lost 8% of their value, and something similar happened in the rest of the region, where Spain and Portugal registered a prices decrease of 7% and Greece of 10%.

According to Mrs. Giulia Eremita, marketing manager of trivago.it, there are two reasons why room prices need to be readjusted during a crisis. On the one hand, a lower quotation can be the direct consequence of a contraction in demand for a particular service, aimed at relaunching it offering a more convenient price. On the other hand, prices decline can be the result of the GDP contraction, which can be in turn be influenced by the reduction of the intake generated by the tourist business.

At a time in which Euro-mediterranean countries remain among the preferred destinations for international tourists, it would be wise to start offering attractive pakages helping Italy to gain as much as possible from the current fees and help its tourism industry to regain its competitive edge.

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According to Francesco Starace, CEO of the company, being a pioneer in geothermal energy production, Enel Green Power is strengthening its role abroad as the world’s undisputed leader in the geothermal energy sector. He defined the possibility to work for the U.S. Army a further step to consolidate such a leading position and stated to be “excited to have been given the chance to support the U.S. Army’s efforts in achieving their clean energy goals”.

Enel Green Power has already a significant presence in both Europe and North America, and last year it generated more than 25 billion kWh from water, sun, wind and the Earth’s heat – enough to meet the energy needs of  around 10 million households and avoid the emission of over 18 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.

It is not surprising that such achievement are obtained by an Italian company. Italy has always been a pioneer in the field of renewable energy and, in particular, geothermal technologies, since the beginning of the past Century: on July 4th, 1904,  Prince Piero Ginori Conti from Florence tested the first geothermal power generator in Larderello – a small town laying on the hills around Pisa -,  successfully managing to lit four light bulbs. Prince Ginori Conti had an adventurous and daring personality, that led him to excel both in science and politics. Not only he initiated a new path in energy production, but he also was an active member of Parliament and Senator until the early Twenties.

After, the world’s first commercial geothermal power plant was built in Larderello, Italy remained the world’s only industrial producer of geothermal electricity until 1958. Nowadays, our country maintains the leading role achieved decades ago.

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“The robust economic potential in China cannot be ignored”, said Ferrari’s chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo. However, it seems that America will contribute much more than China to Italian sports cars maker rebirth. It has been estimated that the Greater China market plus the Far East region will guarantee a +2 percent contribution to Ferrari turnover in the next five years, but the U.S. will generate 10 percent more. Beyond that, in 2017 China and the U.S. will both contribute to 30 percent of turnover, although the starting point is quite different now: 28 percent for China and 20 for the U.S. So China is going to be important, but the U.S. even more!

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