Translator: Michele Gianella Reviewer: Nicoletta Pedrana
My name is Daniele Manni,
I've been teaching computer science for 25 years
at the Galilei Costa Institute in Lecce.
Thanks to this year's TEDx theme
I've found out I am a visionary sharer.
This because my life as a teacher
has been characterised by three main co-creative experiences.
Actually, I should say 2.1 great co-creative experiences.
I’m using a decimal number
because two of these projects have already been in place for some time,
while instead the third one has just been conceived
and will be announced to you in a few minutes right on this stage.
My story began in the mid ‘80s
when after graduating and while working as a teacher,
I decided to give free rein to my “enterprising” spirit.
Still, I didn’t become an entrepreneur but rather an “initiator”,
someone who likes to start new businesses,
create them, lead them to success or failure
before abandoning them
in order to set up a new one.
From 1986 to 1999 I co-founded four different companies,
two of which miserably went bust
whereas the other two are making my former partners richer.
(Laughter)
Let’s come now to 1999
when I embarked on my first co-creative experience.
In 1999, I decided to make a radical change in my life:
I stopped creating companies outside school
and decided to funnel all of my expertise and know-how
into my work at school,
namely I decided to share my experiences with my students.
And I don’t simply tell them about what I used to do
and how I did it,
instead I actually set up new small businesses with them,
trying to turn them all into real companies.
Today they are called startups.
But in order to do this -
prick up your ears, I'm about to drop the bomb -
I became an "outlaw" teacher:
I completely disregarded all ministerial syllabi
and from that moment on
I decided to work on topics I deemed relevant.
I chose which topics to pursue with my students.
I spent about half of my class hours
on non-existent subjects.
I opted for innovation, creativity and experimentation.
Soon after, together with my colleague and partner in life,
and 16 fifth-year high school students, we decided to create Arianoa,
which in our local dialect means “new air”.
Arianoa is a full fledged cooperative society
which has proved to be extremely useful
in actually helping our students
set up legally-sound startups.
Arianoa is definitively innovative: it was noticed and is gaining visibility
also thanks to a wonderful generativity project
run by the Università Cattolica in Milan and the Luigi Sturzo institute.
It’s an innovative concept
that we now call incubator or youth-startup accelerator,
while eleven years ago it was only a vision.
Since then, my students have created, managed, run…
and almost invariably shutdown more than 20 startups,
20 small businesses.
Now only three of them have survived
and continue to go from strength to strength
generating an income for the students who set them up.
If we wish to work out the survival rate of these startups,
it stands at around 13%,
which is a reportedly excellent result.
Now, I would like to take a closer look at some of these startups
so that you may realize how easy and simple it often is
to transform into proper businesses
small ideas developed on a class blackboard.
The first one I’ll tell you about is the "Meditalian" Diet Festival.
Our students have been organizing this festival for four years.
It’s held in the main square in Lecce.
Our students manage to attract
over 60 small quality food companies
from the area
and thousands of tourists at the same time
all thanks to an innovative tourist formula they have come up with.
It is called 30-20-10.
Translated into words, it means:
sleep with 30 euro, eat with 20 and buy local food with 10.
The second small business is called Shopping Face.
It has been created and is run by four 17-year-old girls
who provide tolocal traders and merchants
the service of setting up and managing their Facebook pages,
for traders lack either the time, or the skills, to do that themselves.
Antonio Monaco has instead created "Landware - wearing your land".
One day he had an intuition
and, just before his final exams, he came up to me in the corridor
saying he had had an idea.
Well, let me tell you, on a personal note,
how rewarding it is to hear that.
It’s been going on for years now:
I regularly get stopped by students in the corridor
saying,: "Sir, I have an idea".
We tend to discard most of them, but sometimes we approve them.
And it was the case for Antonio Monaco’s idea
of reversing a very famous quote that had been around for 37 years:
37 years ago came to light this blockbuster sentence:
“I Love New York”.
This famous quote has been copied in all languages,
cities and territories;
Antonio Monaco happened to be the first one to reverse it.
He said to me, “Sir,
what if Salento was the first land to love people and not to be loved?”
He designed a “Salento loves me” t-shirt
He made an investment, and spent 50 euros:
14 euros to print a couple of samples
and the rest went on fuel.
He drove around the peninsula,
proposing his t-shirt to shopkeepers,
who began ordering it and giving him a down payment
that allowed him to pay the print house.
He continued this way
and within 20 days, out of this small initial investment.
he had managed to make over 1500 euro.
Then, of course, he just went from strength to strength.
Other students have invented a card called “SKS”.
It’s a really simple card and offers discounts for students.
In next to no time
these guys managed to convince 80 stores to enter an agreement
and sold cards to students at five euro each.
Thus, they sort of had a double source of income:
shopkeepers on one hand, who paid 60-70 euro
to enter an annual agreement;
while on the other, they sold their cards to other students.
Here instead, an entire class improvised a travel agency.
It’s not an ordinary travel agency,
but an agency specialized in school trips.
They targeted their peers all over Italy,
inviting them to Salento on their school trips,
offering a number of interesting activities.
When the coaches arrived,
the students, not the adults, were welcoming their peers
took them to the hotel
and oversaw activities throughout their stay.
The “Master Prof” activity began just a few months ago.
It’s the initiative of a class that wanted to look all over Italy
those teachers who are labelled as “extra ordinary”, out of the ordinary,
capable of thinking outside the box.
A little personal note, now:
One day one of my students asked me,
"Sir, do you think you are the only one to do these strange things?"
And I said, "I hope not, I definitely don’t think so."
"So why don’t we look for the others?".
That’s how “Master Prof” was born.
Today this website is online
and I believe it numbers 150 extra-ordinary teacher profiles.
Let’s now come to Nectarea, an extra virgin olive oil.
This time the innovation consists in the way in which the oil is marketed.
It is an excellent extra virgin olive oil:
but both the website and the packaging
tend to present it essentially as a healthcare product.
We all know that extra virgin olive oil is beneficial,
but this one is sold specifically as being good for you.
Still, if you want to, feel free to use it also in the kitchen.
(Laughter)
Antonio Scarnera is a genius
who started his career at 13 - 14 years old,
as he had an intuition:
he created an online sales site for Internet services.
Well, it’s more complicated, let’s say he sells web space.
Except, the idea was to sell it to his peers
who couldn’t afford more than 10, 15 or 20 euro.
This is an emblematic story because today, and I am not ashamed to say it -
well, to be honest, I am a bit ashamed to say so -
he makes more than me.
(Laughter)
He’s just turned 18, and he makes more than me.
Smart Siti, the latest-born.
Four months ago, four students,
two in their fifth-year now and two college freshmen,
joined up and started creating websites.
So, "Siti" is not a misspelling,
I know "Smart city" is spelled differently;
but it’s been done on purpose.
What’s their characteristic?
They have decided
to customize websites for clients,
they offer a taylor-like product.
The website slogan is "The web artisan workshop".
I want to underline
that all these start-ups and initiatives
are created with a very low initial effort or by taking out modest loans.
No major financial commitment is expected, for two reasons:
to begin, we cannot afford it, because we are a school;
secondly, I like my students
to try and come up with ideas
that work because of their skills, know how,
and not just because they have money to invest.
Let’s now have a look at the second co-creative project.
This time the protagonists themselves are our students: the startuppers.
They have started sharing their stories
with junior school pupils.
For over a year, in fact,
they have been going out to middle schools
to talk about their experience with younger students.
They explain what they created and how they went about it,
be it a discount card,
a new Facebook service or a new t-shirt.
And the result is invariably the same:
they are always met with great enthusiasm and curiosity
and never fail to captivate their audience.
We actually gave these initiatives a name.
It’s an acronym that might look like a chemical formula:
N2Y4B. which stands for "Never too young for business".
[Translate into Italian]
We are talking of students, aged between 15 and 18,
teaching and sharing with younger kids, 13 and 14- year-olds,
their entrepreneurial know-how.
And it is working just fine!
Let’s move on to the third co-creative experience:
as I announced earlier on.
It’s truly newborn.
There were two factors that led me to think of it:
the first one was an international competition.
The second one, once again,
was the wonderful theme chosen for this edition of TEDx: "Share".
Last year I took part in an international competition
and in this competition came out
that our 15-year-long experience in Salento
to help students under the age of 19
set up businesses or startups.
Well, this experience turned out to be unique
not only in Italy, but also in Europe and probably all over the world.
How extraordinary…
Heck no, it's not extraordinary.
From my point of view, it's just incredibly sad!
I’m absolutely convinced that all students,
and let me emphasize this:
all students who are considering
a university course in business management
have the right - if you ask me, the duty -
to experiment hands-on
what creating and managing a business feels like.
What dealing with customers and suppliers,
with returns, costs and banks, means.
And they shouldn’t do so in a simulated reality, but in real life.
Besides being a witness to all the beautiful,
extraordinary stories that we are all listening to together,
this stage is also witness to a new story
which has yet to be written and lived.
This is because from tomorrow -
and tomorrow, means tomorrow, not Sunday but from Monday -
we are going to share
our experiences, exercises, examples of startups
with the rest of the country, with all other schools in Italy
and all other teachers.
We are going to post these models on a website,
open to everybody,
so that they may be emulated and copied.
Also this project was given a name, Suite Lab.
Once again, an acronym:
"StartUp Incubators for Technical - Economic Institutes".
Let me now wrap up with a call.
I want to appeal to all my colleagues,
to the Italian teaching staff
of any kind of school, whatever discipline they may teach,
and invite them to carry out four actions.
I invite my colleagues
to innovate, experiment and create.
But above of all, to share.
Thank you.
(Applause)