Good evening everybody
Thank you for inviting me here tonight for these talks
When I accepted the invite, I thought I would talk about technology
I hadn't really understood the theme was going to be courage.
It's a difficult issue and it's even more difficult...
... to say something original at the end of this evening.
Ted actually makes us feel responsible with its motto 'Ideas worth spreading'
I am not completely sure I have an idea which is worth spreading.
But I hope so, then I won't waste your time.
If I was invited here, it's maybe because I can talk of courage in business.
Business is in fact what I have mostly done in my life
I started working early, while I was studying
a bereavement in the family made me soon responsible
and when I was 20 to 22 I started setting up some shops and supermarkets...
Afterwards I quit that job and started doing what I had studied for
I entered the banking sector, working in merchant banks
and financial institutions in Milan, then London...
At 31 I was a manager, I had an important career opportunity
but I wanted to face enterprise, I wanted to be free...
I wanted to be the architect of my own destiny
I wanted to fly, I wanted to do something else.
It is easy to be brave when you are young
the world seems to be downhill, you have all life in front of you
you feel strong, your wings can easily get you over the mountains.
So I happened to develop some so called start-ups
I set up a small supermarket chain which then I sold
In 1994 I set up internet in Prague, Czech Republic
I wanted to encounter the new European countries
and see what was happening outside the Italian borders.
The new network technology was extraordinary for us islanders
it gave us the possibility to be connected to others.
I started the adventure of taking the first commercial internet offer...
to the Czech Republic, a country where it took years to get land line
and who had it, usually had a duplex.
It's hard to access internet with a duplex...
That story lasted 3 years, in 1998 I sold that company
to a US private equity fund, with good earnings.
I did it because I wanted to go back home to continue that job
I thought I was doing the right thing totally consistent with what was happening in the world
I also thought that on an island we could understand it better
understand the meaning of being at home and working for the whole world
being at home, but not isolated
being at home and living connected to others
and possibly creating new jobs for others far from you.
So I took my work to Sardinia, gave it a Sardinian name...
'Tiscali' is the name of a cave where Sardinians used to hide
to protect themselves from Phoenician invasions.
We thought we were clever, the company was based on knowledge...
In 1991 a research centre opened on the island, it was called CRS4...
Carlo Rubbia had come from Geneva, he had seen the web start a few months earlier
he told us to work on the web development because interesting things would derive from it.
In 1992 others started working on it... in 1993 the first Sardinian daily was published online.
A new culture was created... I was in Prague in 1994...
In 1998 we already knew much about it and we decided to set up a company
not with the idea of making money but of creating the best industry in Sardinia
with the idea of demonstrating that we could create jobs, without external help
and we would be the ones to defend our jobs and we wouldn't wear out the territory...
it wasn't necessary to pollute or to have temporary contracts
it wasn't necessary to treat people badly, instead we would treat them better...
This is why we developed the first company nursery school in the south of Italy
and this is why we have 99.5% of employees with an open-ended contract.
It was like wind, a beautiful adventure
soon later the company was assessed, we had the necessary resources to grow
we grew in Italy and also in other European countries
in 2003 our turnover was of one billion Euros or more
several thousands of people worked for us...
...at least 1700 in Sardinia.
Maybe it took courage not to sell.
We didn't follow the delusion of transforming a widespread utility into money
We wanted to follow an industrial project, we dreamt of developing a business
to create jobs, beauty, culture and knowledge...
that could influence the whole country...
to change that destiny which seems to be written, but is actually not.
At the end of 2003 I received a strange call in my life
I was asked to engage in politics, I had never done anything in politics
I knew what we were doing had its social responsibility
I knew that creating jobs is a political action
I knew what we were doing was important
but then I had the ambition of saying it would be more important
if it were done for a whole country and not just for a company
it would be more important for this IT revolution
and for this digital revolution... to be developed all together
the whole community and not only one company.
My political experience lasted five years I stood for election and I lost.
When I went back to Tiscali I didn't find the company I had left
It had changed completely it was experiencing crisis...
I realized that I hadn't just hit the wall in politics
but while I was getting up again I hit another wall, as hard as the first one.
When you're young, it is easy to be brave...
But another ten years had passed...
Now I'm 56 years old, I have four grown up sons
and a nephew getting christened tomorrow
I also feel responsible for the people working with us...
I encountered fear...
when you're a grown up you try to keep something safe
instead of starting again... and risking something else
instead of thinking you are still able to climb the mountain.
Fear helped me a lot and maybe taught me more than courage
and today I am a better man, maybe because of fear...
maybe because of the clashes against those stone walls.
I am walking this path bravely but with fear in my pockets
I find myself starting again putting a company back together
I am trying to guarantee the jobs for one thousand people
and I am starting again with the tools of the trade... intelligence, strength of mind, passion for what I do...
we must know that the talents we have were given to us in order to use them
and not to hide them underground...
We are not made to stay in a port, we are made to sail into open waters
and the open sea is made of wind, storms and high waves, but in the end you do get somewhere.
And there is no place we can get to without facing storms and danger.
There is no place you get to for free!
The message I would like to pass on is that you should not be afraid
you should manage fear because there is no reason to be afraid...
we are not going to survive this life anyway...
What we have to leave we will definitely leave behind.
So we must face life with courage because it is an extraordinary world
if we know how to take a challenge...
And in this moment of crisis, scepticism and difficulty
for each one of us, for our business, for the entire country...
we must remember that the world is not in crisis
it is actually fighting poverty more quickly than it has ever done
there are billions of people escaping hunger and destitution
they are becoming citizens of the world, the world is running fast...
We must finally put aside resignation and fear.
Last year, for Christmas, when exchanging greetings at work
I used Einstein's words to extend my best wishes
'Don't be afraid of the crisis, the crisis is a moment of change...
it forces us into innovation, it makes us take new directions...
I was happy to notice that in a bookstore close to the cathedral there was a poster
of those same sentences... it costs 4 Euros, I suggest it to all of you.
The strength to overcome this crisis lies within us
this strength can help us understand the importance of this historical moment
there has never been such an important moment before
a moment of peace and freedom for many of us.
Finally today the most important thing is not the land left to us by our father
or the riches or cattle that somebody left for us
but it's intelligence and the ability to make the most of it
the ability to learn, to innovate and create
through creativity, as many others have proven today.
This never existed in the past, each one of us is a capital as never before.
And while school access is easier today... Di Vittorio taught for free in Cerignola...
we even have access to great universities worldwide, also thanks to new technologies...
The future is in our hands, so cheer up everyone...
cheer up South and cheer up Italy!