JULY 2012 - Pirelli...2012, 28 countries previously considered to be of low income have become the home of the middle class. We interviewed Moisés Naím, philosopher and economist,

ANo. 62 — July 2012

No. 62JULY 2012

Pirelli worldwide magazine

1No. 62 — July 2012

Contents

Published byPirelli & C. SpACorporate Communication and Media Relations

Editorial CoordinatorMaurizio AbetDirectorBarbara LightwoodEditor-in-ChiefSimona Gelpi

Editorial officeViale P. e A. Pirelli, 25 - Milano [email protected]

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Registrazione Tribunale di Milanon. 494 del 24.9.1994

Printed on GardaPat 13 Kiara paper

No. 62 — July 2012

www.pirelli.com

Pirelli worldwide magazine

A young company140 years old

GDP is the social network

You have to think local to be global

Growth is easier of what you think

The producer-consumer is born, distribuited capitalism is the future

The factory’s future is hidden in the past

A tradition on the move

Capitalising on the past to build the future

From industrial recovery to contemporary art exhibition centre

Art and the Tyre

Pirelli extends group’s international production presence

Giants too are mortal. Pan American, Woolworths, Kodak, AEG, Enron, Lehm-

an Brothers – not one of these firms was saved by their riches, their rep-utations, their world-famous brand names. Bankruptcies are part and parcel of the economic system. As far back as 1942 the famous econo-mist Joseph Schumpeter used to impress on his students: “This pro-cess of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in.”

If that is the case, how did a small rub-ber factory founded 140 years ago in Milan do better than merely survive this crazed dynamic? How could this firm grow stead-ily to become a global corporation?

I don’t know, for I am not an expert, so several suppositions will have to suffice by way of an answer.

Firstly, the leaders of such a company must, like experienced boxers, have good footwork, that is, they must be mobile and must anticipate the moves of their opponents.

Secondly, good nerves are essential. Persistence and powers of observa-tion are also part of the make-up of those who survive.

Thirdly, flexibility does not mean short-term thinking. Quite the contrary. Those who have an eye only on the next quarterly report will not last long. And by the way, these three rules also apply at the smallest level, for example sole traders, and that includes artists, film directors, composers or writers.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger (Translation by Geoffrey Mulligan)

How is long-term survival under capitalism possible?

From Left: Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Moisés Naím, Giuseppe Berta, Jeremy Rifkin

The illustrations contained are all the work of Stefan Glerum for Pirelli Annual Report 2011

2 3PIRELLI WORLD No. 62 — July 2012

The cycle of a business’s life goes well beyond the gen-erations of people who have

contributed to establishing it, man-aging it, making it live every day. So it is fundamental to a company that the passing of time does not corre-spond with growing old. Its outlook must be constantly young, innova-tive, projected towards the future. It must capitalise on the experience of the past, marrying it with the ex-perience of the present to think of a lasting tomorrow to be able to con-tinue to overcome the challenges imposed by the competition, the evolvement of technology, discon-tinuity of economic cycles and an ever more global economy.If Pirelli becomes 140 today, it is be-cause in 1872 it was able to adhere to this vision, carrying forward that same look of modernity that Giovan Battista Pirelli showed in founding the company at the age of just 24 years-old; and that of his grandson Leopoldo, with whom I had the good fortune to work and who, among

other things, was a great anticipa-tor of matters concerning globali-sation. We have been able to keep ourselves ‘young’ in the manner in which we project ourselves by con-stantly thinking of the future to be able every day to ensure a tomorrow to a company so deeply rooted in the entrepreneurial history of Italy.After 20 years as the operative leader of the company, I personally am es-pecially proud that, at this impor-tant milestone, Pirelli is in excellent health. In fact, last year we set our-selves ambitious objectives, which we achieved ahead of time in rela-tion to forecasts fixed by our indus-trial plan. And we did it despite the difficulties that hit the world econ-omy, first those of Europe, due to our ability to confront the world in a continuous state of change, as well as our increasingly global stance. A change that could represent a great opportunity if one is able to broaden one’s own frontiers following the evolution of the macroeconomic scenario.

In 2011, we strengthened our pres-ence in Romania and China, con-tinued the establishment of the technological centre at Settimo Torinese, laid the foundations for production in prominent markets like Russia – fulfilled in the early months of this year – and began the construction of a factory in Mexico, an ideal bridge for the en-tire NAFTA area, and the realisation of which has now been completed. Important steps towards further geographic diversification which, in 2012, has already pushed us as far as Indonesia, where we recently finalised a joint venture for a new factory.Those results are just the latest in a journey which, particularly in the last three years, has seen us working to focus the company on its original core business: tyres. Whichever way the world goes, it will always be moving on tyres and we are, there-fore, convinced that we are operat-ing in a sector that offers substan-tial opportunities for growth.

Our industrial plan that looks ahead to 2015 sees us concentrated on the conquest of leadership in the premium segment, satisfying the growing demand for highly quali-fied and sophisticated products throughout the world: not only in mature economies like Europe, but also in those of rapid development where growth in demand accompa-nies an evolution in the styles of the consumers.There are still many things to do to continue to improve ourselves and achieve our objectives, facing an economy which is ever more inter-connected and beating new chal-lenges every day. Like that of Formu-la 1, which for us signifies not only a great return for our image, but also increased knowhow to trans-fer to our road tyres in the wake of a tradition that saw our company a protagonist in official motor sport competition from as far back as the 1907 Peking to Paris.Formula 1 is an experience that will continue this year and next,

and which will always see us as protagonists in the development of new technologies and innovative ideas. We have also met the chal-lenge of sustainability in the same way, starting up production pro-cesses which are ever more atten-tive to the environment, safety of the products and the people, from our employees to the consumer. A constant commitment that we put into improving the attention we pay to sustainable growth and our corporate governance, which sees a central role of the board of directors in the definition of the strategic destinations, monitoring and risk management.Every day since 1872, we have put enthusiasm and creativity into our work to grow, achieve new objec-tives and celebrate new birthdays. My thanks go to the thousands and thousands of people who contrib-ute to Pirelli today, as in the past, to building each day a young company 140 years-old.

Marco Tronchetti Provera

A young company 140 years old

Whichever way the world goes, it will always be moving on tyres


A world cut in half. Not by ideology but by economies. Or, better put, by con-sumption: there are

those who sell what they have ac-cumulated by whim over decades and those that satisfy their de-sire to buy that which they have desired for decades. The change is radical and transversal: it goes beyond the division of the planet

between north and south, like the dichotomy between west and east. From China to Botswana via South Africa and Columbia the new social aggregator is the gross domestic product. In the last five years, the GDP has forged civilisa-tion more than religion or ethnic groups with the creation of an enormous, tumultuous average middle class: from 2006 to 2012, 28 countries previously considered to

be of low income have become the home of the middle class.A level of growth that has not been seen since post-war times, when electrical appliances and televisions marched into American and European homes. But the similarities with that period end there. “The new middle class has desires and conducts itself in a manner similar to those of 60 years ago”, explained Moisés Naím, philosopher and economist, member

GDP is the social networkIn the last five years, the GDP has forged civilization more

than religion or ethnic groups with the creation of an

enormous, tumultuous average middle class: from 2006 to

2012, 28 countries previously considered to be of low income

have become the home of the middle class. We interviewed

Moisés Naím, philosopher and economist, on the matter.


of the Carnegie endowment associa-tion of development and cooperation for international peace, which has its headquarters in Washington DC.“At that time, national political condi-tions and global structure were much different. Today, the risks and gambles connected to a similar transformation are much higher at both a political and social level. And the world is at risk of finding itself unprepared”.Sixty year-old Naím has a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) of Boston, is a Venezuelan ex-minister of industry and development and president of the World Bank and is currently a member of the directorate of the International Crisis Group. So we asked him to explain why.

Let’s begin at the beginning. Are all the new consumers the same?There are differences in the ability to spend and level of income that define the middle class of every country. In Brazil, for example, you are a consumer if you have a $15,000 annual income. In America, you are poor with that kind of income.

And the rest?The recently ‘born’ consumers have one common characteristic: they come from countries that were ex-tremely poor, heavily populated or had a high birth rate until a short time ago.

For example?China, Turkey, Mexico, Nigeria, Co-lombia. The data on Latin America is surprising: for instance, between 2002 and 2008, before the global cri-sis, 41 million people emerged from poverty.

What does the fact of being many and no longer poor imply?It influences the consumption of these people. But it also influences the consequences that this consump-tion can have.

Meaning?The newborn middle class is hungry for that which they have never had. Medicine to cure themselves with. Different and whimsical alimentation. Means of transport. A home. Then, with time and additional income,

desires increase and diversify…A standard route?Partly. Compared to the post-war period, the differences are significant.

Which?There existed a middle class in Europe and America in the Fifties. But for the major part of those countries considered emergent today, this is an absolutely new development.

And so?In most cases, the current govern-ments are not equipped to respond to economic change. After having bought a car, their citizens want better roads. After the computer, a higher degree of education. But the institutions don’t know how to respond to those needs. On top of that, you must not underestimate the comparison effect…

Which?We are in a globalised age. At the top of the new middle classes’ acquisi-tions list there are cellular telephones, communication instruments, satellite dishes. A little like having a window

The emergent powers par excel-lence are those identified with the acronym BRIC, which then became BRICS with the addition of South Africa, and appeared for the first time in 2001 in a report by Gold-man Sachs. The centres of econo-my are, therefore, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Source: International Monetary Fund.Pirelli is present with industrial plants in China, Brazil, Russia

BrazilGDP 2011

+2.7% estimate 2012

+3.7%PoPULatioN:

205.716 million

LaboUr force:

104.3 million

aUtomotive (saLes):

+5% (2011)

+12% (2010)

ChinaGDP 2011

+9.2% estimate 2012

+8.2%PoPULatioN:

1,343 billion

LaboUr force:

816.2 million

aUtomotive (saLes):

+2.5% (2011)

+32% (2010)

+10-15% (2022)

RussiaGDP 2011

+4.3% estimate 2012

+4%PoPULatioN:

138 million

LaboUr force:

75.41 million

aUtomotive (saLes):

+39% (2011)

+30.2% (2010)

IndiaGDP 2011

+7.8% estimate 2012

+7.3%PoPULatioN:

1,2 billion

LaboUr force:

487 million

aUtomotive (saLes):

+27% (2011)

+31% (2010)

South AfricaGDP 2011

+2.6% estimate 2012

+2.5%PoPULatioN:

48.810 million

LaboUr force:

17.68 million

aUtomotive (saLes):

+31% (2011)

+7% (2010)

on the world, differences that separate them from other peoples.What happens?The difference between the speed of economic growth and the response of governments, added to the compari-son with other populations, creates a very dangerous political gap.

What can the consequences be?We saw them in Tunisia, the country in which the Arab Spring began, as well as being a country that had the most sustained economic growth before the revolution.But there was a problem of democ-racy in that country.The same thing is happening in Chile, a country of phenomenal eco-nomic growth and good democratic institutions – but with a government which is too slow in understanding the transformation.

Is there a breeding ground for revolution connected to the birth of a new economic class?I believe the principal cause of the next conflicts could be the rage gen-erated by the non-respected expec-

tations of the middle class. Much more than the civil unrest which one often hears discussed.In the developed world the situation is the reverse.Not completely: the economic process is the opposite, but the consequences can be the same.

Which are?In Europe and America, the crisis has unravelled the middle class, which is changing dimension. In this case, too, the governments have not been able to respond. And this inability feeds political and social instability.

In brief, the economy alone is not enough to regulate the world?Economic progress brings with it real benefits and possibilities. But to make it solid and stable, the po-litical contribution is fundamental. Otherwise, the consequences, also at an international level, are unpredict-able. But they can quickly manifest themselves.

P.W.

“After having bought a car, their citizens want better roads. After the computer, a higher degree of education. But the institutions don’t know how to respond to those needs”

9No. 62 — July 2012

You have to think local to be global

For years, globalisation has been a process that everybody has had to take into ac-count. There are those who are subjected to it, those who govern it and those who try to ride it. For a long time, it has coin-

cided with delocalisation as a way of bringing down labour and production costs in general and avoiding bureaucracy.

Arguments that have not completely lost their validity, but in the course of time there has been a significant evolution. Long columns of data on the stagnant econ-omy, when not in recession, of the most industrialised nations against the growth – often in two figures – of the so-called ‘emerging’ countries. China and India are the tip of that iceberg. And more economic ferment is gathering in other areas of east and west Asia, part of South America and even some African countries. They are the new markets of global consumption in which it is fundamental to be present.

In 2012-2013, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts for Europe talk of a contained growth of 0.5%; for China, even if it is slowing down, the gross national product increase is expected to be 8.3% and India over 7%. But Malaysia and Indonesia will also grow by more than 5%.

One can object, saying the average income of a Chinese, which is less than €8,000 a year, is a long way from that of the countries with so-called ‘mature’ economies.

True, but not everyone can spend to create a market. In the big Chinese numbers (1.3 billion inhabitants) and those of other countries, a level of well being of some categories of the population is found to justify the decision to make it a reference market.

The technological one is an example. The second Credit Suisse survey on consumption in emergent countries, which was made public in January, shows how they are already partially developed, but there are still large margins for which to do business. In China, over 40% of families surveyed with an income of less than 500 dollars a month have a computer, while little more than 10% have acquired a Smartphone. There are similar per-centages in India regarding the latter product, though the PCs in the homes of that income category do not even hit 5%. The research also shows that penetration of global brands is always greater, from cosmetics to clothing, automotive to technology, even in the lower income segments of the population.“Just a few years ago, it was almost exclusively the mechanical industries that took their production to Asia,” says Luca Gorlero, managing director of Affini-tas Consulting in the United Arab Emirates, who has built all of his career around emerging markets. “More recently”, he continued, “things have changed. The in-creased available income in the Chinese metropolitan areas, in particular, has made moving production on location more interesting, including for mass consump-tion products”.

9


So on what basis does one make a decision to go overseas? There are four dimensions to take into consideration according to the scheme of Pankaj Ghemawa, profes-sor at the Iese Business School. “The economic one”, explained Alberto Dal Sasso, business unit director of the Nielsen Strategic Consultancy, “was the first push towards delocalisation, together with the administrative one. Then there are geographical and cultural motiva-tions. Every company must take all those decisions into consideration to decide if, how much and where to export or whether to produce on the spot in other countries”. The re-sponse cannot be one alone, but more often it is to go there where there is a new demand to satisfy.

The geographical element has become central. With the development of enormous markets by dimensions, presence on the territory had be-come more complex to take on. Says Dal Sasso, “Reaching a billion Chinese or Indians isn’t as simple as communicating with 270 million Europeans. We are speaking of countries that have no comparable level of infrastructure”. Those who are able to face the problem of territorial distribution effectively can have enormous advantages, which sometimes also run up against entry barriers that are in no way inferior to those on the opposite route. This despite the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) work on the harmonisation of international norms, to say nothing of the existing duties and those which some countries continue to introduce. The cost of an American car goes up by over 25% to get into China. “Often”, confirms the Nielsen director, “if one wants to be present in certain markets,

building a production unit locally is not a choice, it’s a necessity”. And that doesn’t only concern industry in the narrowest sense. There are great investment op-portunities in agriculture, especially in India and the Caucuses”, Gorlero maintains.

“In the hypothetical matrix, on one side there is the single standardised product made at one location and presented everywhere in the same way. On the other, there is a model of capillary production, which is the

closest possible to the end consumer. The major part of the equation is in the middle”. The model of the for-mer are a number of technological products which, perhaps, are con-ceptually born in the United States but are produced in China, with the greater part of their components com-ing from Japan. And then they are sold throughout the world.

On the other side of the coin there is the alimentary segment, the one

most influenced by tradition. Recipes for global prod-ucts, which are presumed to be the same everywhere, in reality, contain small differences to adapt them to the local context. Often in this area, it is preferred to acquire local brands and not launch oneself into a pro-duction adventure. Knowing how to respond to the various needs of the different markets is fundamental.

Delocalising “means 70% adapting oneself and 30% im-posing one’s company models”, says Garlero. The ability to innovate, even when one has a company culture that has been consolidated over time, is one of the essential requisites of being present in global markets. P.W.

“If one wants to be present in certain markets, building a production unit locally is not a choice, it’s a necessity”

Founded in 1872, Pirelli is the fifth tyre maker in the world in terms of sales. Present in over 160 countries, it counted 22 tyre production sites in four continents and employed approximately 36,000 people.


Europe vacillates. America finds it tough going. The emerging countries are slowing down. To re-emerge from the quagmire into which the world economy seems to be sinking, the password is growth. From east to west, political leaders, businessmen and analysts have repeated that word for months while being unable to translate it into concrete action up until now.A universal recipe doesn’t exist, but it is possible to correct the direction we are taking. Especially by work-ing on strategies and investments. Starting with human capital, an outmoded term which, according to more than one study, could be the key to starting up the whole system again. “People were talking about it

as early as the Sixties, even if with different accents”, explains Jean-Paul Fitoussi, economist, member of the board of economic analysts to the French government as well as president of the Observatoire fran-çais des conjonctures économiques (French joint observatory of the economy). “Today, the expression must be changed: we must talk about the evolution and the competence of the labour force. Apart from the terms, however, it is a matter of an undisputed growth factor”. We asked M. Fitoussi, who is also a lecturer at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris and of the interna-tional University Luiss of Rome, to explain how and why.

Growth is easier of what you think

Jean-Paul fitoussi is the Professor Emeritus at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Institute of Political Studies, Paris) and the LUISS of Rome. He is currently director of research at the Observatoire Français des Economiques (French Observatory for Economic Trends), an institute of economic research and forecasts. He was born in 1942 at La Goulette.

An interview with the economist Jean-Paul Fitoussi


Question: What has changed in the human capital concept compared to a few decades ago?Answer: We used to talk generically about progress in productivity in the workplace: when that grew, we believed that the competence of the workers also increased.

And today?Now we say more generically that the greater the competence of the workers the greater productivity will be. Research has shown that half the increase in productivity in a com-pany depends on a parallel increase in human capital.

Does that mean that the people have won over the ‘technicalisation’ of work?It’s not a battle between man and machine; the two things don’t ex-

clude each other. Technology goes hand-in-hand with the increase in professional qualification. When there was the technological revolution in industry, it was understood that work-ers without sufficient qualifications were unable to use it. So neither one was of any use.

So business began to invest in workers?No, decidedly not. The growing im-portance of financial activities in the economy takes away from the companies the possibility of invest-ing in their men and women.

What does ‘financial activities in the economy’ mean?It means that the companies must present their accounts and convince the markets every three months. This, which is almost automatic, implies

showing that one has reduced one’s costs: at the stock exchange, lower costs means a greater value of the business.

Are the workers a cost?That depends on the temporal hori-zons of reference. The period of ini-tial investment, the one in which a company employs a worker and trains him, obviously has a cost. But over a long period, the expenditure becomes a profit due to an increase in productivity.

How many companies remember that?Very few. The financial activities of the economy obstruct employment. The concept of training on the job and from work has practically disappeared from our economy: there is the problem of increasing the value of the company.

How does one get out of such an impasse?The reality is that the system is not well designed to raise the human capital.

Why?The training of competence, even in liberal systems, a public duty, has always been with public funding.

And so?Taking Europe as an example, it wanted to create the most com-petitive society of knowledge in the world. It wanted a system based on research. That was even committed to paper in a document.

Then what happened?Europe became based on words, not on research.

What does that mean?That it gave itself an objective, but it didn’t want to spend a penny on achieving it.

It even cut expenditure on education.Right. It didn’t invest in human capital. It allowed the education system and advanced teaching to degrade. Precisely the contrary to that which it had to do. So it did not aim for growth.

So how do we recover the human capital-business-growth ratio?We need a joint effort. The com-panies must create foundations to finance university research, and they in turn must create the system and aim for quality, as already happens in the USA.

And then?Then you need to do internal train-ing, employing young people. If that doesn’t happen, you will create a vicious circle.

Which?Companies ask for ‘seniority’ when they employ someone. But young people can’t be senior if nobody trains them. And if no-one employs them, unemployment is created – and the economy stops.

In short, we need to change direction.We have the key to growth in our hands: human capital. We have it, and we must use it. G.S.

Now we say more generically that

the greater the competence of the workers

the greater productivity will be

We have the key to growth in our hands:

human capital.

We have it and we must use it


Energy regimes shape the nature of civi-lizations —how they are organized, how the fruits of commerce and trade are dis-tributed, how political power is exercised, and how social relations are conducted.

In the twenty-first century, the locus of control over energy production and distribution is going to tilt from giant fossil fuel–based centralized energy com-panies to millions of small producers who will gener-ate their own renewable energies in their dwellings and trade surpluses on a vast energy internet just like we now create our own information and share it online. We are entering the era of distributed capital-ism: the Third Industrial Revolution.

The First and Second Industrial Revolutions were based on elite fossil fuel energies: they require a significant military investment to secure their access and continual geopolitical management to assure their availability. They also require centralized, top down command and control systems and massive concentrations of capital.

The emerging Third Industrial Revolu-tion, by contrast, is organized around distributed renewable energies that are found everywhere and are, for the most part, free—sun, wind, hydro, geothermal heat, biomass, and ocean waves and tides. The distributed nature of renew-able energies necessitates collaborative rather than hierarchical command and control mechanisms. A more dis-tributed and collaborative industrial revolution, in turn, invariably leads to a more distributed sharing of the wealth generated.

A fundamental change is occurring in the way both information and energy are produced and distributed in a capitalist economy. The shrinking of transaction costs in the music business and publishing field with the emergence of file sharing of music, ebooks, and news blogs, is wreaking havoc on these traditional in-dustries and we can expect similar disruptive impacts as the transaction costs of green energy continue to diminish. The democratization of information and energy is a paradigm shift with profound implica-tions for the way we organize commerce and trade.

While the TIR economy allows millions of people to produce their own information and energy, a new digital manufacturing revolution now opens up the possibility

of following suit in the production of durable goods. In the emerging era, everyone can potentially be their own manufacturer as well. The process is called 3-D printing; and although it sounds like science fiction, it is already coming online, and promises to change the entire way we think of industrial production. Think about pushing the print button on your computer and sending a digital file to an inkjet printer, except, with 3-D printing, the machine runs off a three-dimensional product. On site, 3-D printing of customized manu-factured products will allow small and medium-sized enterprises to flourish by reducing material and logistics costs. Being able to produce their own green energy on site will dramatically reduce their energy costs and increase their profitability, giving them a competitive

advantage in the marketplace.

Even consumers can become their own producers in the Third Indus-trial Revolution lateral economy. In the first two industrial revolutions, consumers were nothing more than customers, passively waiting to buy the next product, never concerned with its mode of production or its impact on the environment. Distrib-uted capitalism, however, is “power to the people”: millions of individuals can now produce their own informa-tion, energy, and even manufacture products in their homes, and share surpluses on the info internet, the energy-internet, and across a green transport network.

In the Third Industrial Revolution era, the producer and consumer meld, creating the empowered prosumer. The

new business models and practices that are emerging along The Third Industrial Revolution infrastructure favor shared networks and lateral ventures, operating on the assumption that mutual interest, when pur-sued collaboratively, is the best route to sustainable economic development.

The Third Industrial Revolution brings with it a de-mocratization of entrepreneurship, but also requires a deep collaborative approach to sharing information, energy, and other resources, both in virtual and geo-graphic spaces, making it one of the greatest disruptive economic revolutions in history.

Jeremy Rifkin is the author of La Terza Rivoluzione Industriale (Mondadori, 2011).

From giant fossil fuel–based centralized energy companies to millions of small producers who will generate their own renewable energies in their dwellings on a vast energy internet

Rifkin, the ‘prosumer’ will be the protagonist of the Third Industrial Revolution

The producer-consumer is born,

distributed capitalism is the future

Jeremy Rifkin is the author of The

New York Times best selling book, The

Third Industrial Revolution, How Lat-

eral Power is Transforming Energy, the

Economy, and the World. Mr. Rifkin is

an adviser to the European Union and

to heads of state around the world.

He is a senior lecturer at the Wharton

School’s Executive Education Program

at the University of Pennsylvania and

the president of the Foundation on

Economic Trends in Washington, D.C.


The factory’s future is hidden in the past

History must not be an apology for the past, but an indi-cation for the fu-ture. Reading the

signals and recollections helps to construct the new, starting from the past. That axiom is as valid for a man as it is for a nation, but also for a business. Giuseppe Berta, contemporary history lecturer at the Bocconi University in Milan and for 30 years a scholar of indus-try and associated phenomena, is convinced of that. Over the last 25 years, major national companies have investigated and gone deeper into their own history, strength-ening their identity. An important task, which has also been made significant for the community with the gathering of evidence and documents and the creation of company museums. “The histo-ry of every company can teach us to recover the sense of risk, remind us that there are no infallible choices and that everything is re-vocable”, explains Berta, “because history has no pre-arranged direc-tion and the variables that we can control are few and far between”.

What is the value and function of company history identity in an era of ‘stateless’ business?

With that definition, one intends to theorise the complete mobility of management and production, but I don’t believe that a business can define itself as stateless. I think of General Motors, of Volkswagen, multinationals that have still main-tained the strong national identity into which they are born and have developed. And looking at Italy, the history of Pirelli is read in that way, a company that keeps its roots firmly in place, not only its Italian roots but, I would say, its Lombardy, or even Milanese ones.

Today, the great industries are talked about above all in terms of leadership. Don’t you believe that this could invalidate and condition the collective historic memory?When we speak of leadership, I think of someone that looks at the busi-ness as an entity that must, more than anything else, be a great system of cooperation in which attitudes, specialities and company identity interact. So leadership is welcome, but only if it is able to construct an identity, put down roots and offer all collaborators an area in which to recognise themselves. An area that corresponds to that cultural matrix which, in the case of a large company, is imbued with history.

Unfortunately, the images of our time tend to present dull, horizontal companies with no history. And un-til a business renews and supports itself over time, it must know how to feed itself from a multiplicity of sources, and identifying sources may not be ignored.

Some businesses are already doing that, also integrating the evaluation of their historic patrimony with the company and its territory.That is the case with Pirelli, which has the merit of knowing that Italy can and must be an industrial out-post, which has its strong points in intelligent manufacture. I have much appreciated the experience applied to SettimoTorinese where, in an area of old industrialisation, a factory has been re-established (with the reorganisation of the factory a book has been published contain-ing a collection of oral testimonies, Ed). Certainly, the factory-monster of the Sixties doesn’t exist any more and no longer makes sense doing so, but that of Settimo remains an important experiment.

So Italy must seek new areas to defend and express its manufacturing and industrial identity?

Definitely, and it must do so for at least three reasons. First because these modern factories are a laboratory of experimentation for the economy of knowledge, since that combination of knowledge and specialisations, is born in the factory. Technical knowledge – and not just that – which you need at times to translate into an organisa-tional language, able to combine itself with others. Second, because modern factories form a trait d’union with the international economic cycle and they are a blessing that our country cannot renounce. Third, because the sedimentation of industrial history is a resource, a value with a tempo-ral dynamic that is able to renew itself over time and already has in itself an eye on the future: showing that there was a ‘before’ also means to allude to the possibility that an ‘afterwards’ exists.

Could the recovery of business history and culture be a necessary ingredient when on the road to growth?First of all, realising that economic history has a long span and is not always predictable could help to even better place the difficult phases.As far as historic patrimony is con-cerned, that could be seen simply as a company ornament, a supplement, and in many cases that’s exactly

what happens, even if it is not the key question. Then it is the case to remember that the companies that pay most attention to their history are the ones in which a strong family continuity exists.

So is business history of any use?Certainly, and it is useful to under-stand two things. If one asks oneself ‘Why a company has become like that?’ the answer is because it has done certain things and not others, because a number of strategic deci-sions have worked and others have not. Then there is a filter in a company. A filter that is not evident, leading to the selection of that which is in the character of a company and that which is not. Certain failures cannot be explained just by the phases of crises, but also by the deviations that could have taken place in respect of the path a company had conceived as right and innate.

The history of business is also useful as a warning, because it shows up the human tendency to repeat that which we know how to do well, or believe we do. This is a resource, but it can become dangerous, and for that reason one must not go beyond the limit. Otherwise, one risks becom-ing the great brake oneself, the first obstacle to the ability to innovate.

Giuseppe Berta is the director of the

Enter Research Centre on entrepreneur-

ship and entrepreneurs at the Bocconi

University in Milan, where he teaches

contemporary history. In the past, he has

also been responsible for the Fiat historic

archive. He has studied industrial history

for many years. His most recent book,

“Fiat Chrysler and the Drift of Industrial

Italy” (Bologna, Il Mulino, 2011). He is a

member of the scientific committee of

the Pirelli Foundation, of the G.G. Feltrinelli

Foundation and a member of the board

of directors of the L. Einaudi Foundation.

“The history of every

company can teach

us to recover the

sense of risk, remind

us that there are no

infallible choices and

that everything is

revocable because

history has no pre-

arranged direction

and the variables that

we can control are

few and far between”.

By Simona Gelpi

A tradition on the move

In recounting 140 years of Pirelli’s history, three basic trends emerge: an aptitude for the most avant-garde innovation, strong roots in Milan’s “polytechnic” culture, and an openness to inter-nationalisation. All this was clear right from the

onset, back in 1872, when the young engineer Giovanni Battista Pirelli founded the company in a small fac-tory in Via Ponte Seveso, in Milan. At that time, rub-ber, which required sophisticated and complex manu-facturing, was radically new in Italy, a country which back then focused mainly on textile and mechanical industrialisation. Pirelli’s direct observations during a long journey across Europe enabled him to reinvent the most advanced production processes adopted in Germany, England, France and Belgium.

Milan was the ideal location in which to establish his company, given its inbred aptitude for superior scien-tific thought and the practical application of discov-eries and technologies. This tradition, ranging from Leonardo’s machines to Carlo Cattaneo’s teachings, was strengthened by the development in industry and related services achieved throughout the course of the twentieth century, known as the “century of industry”. The city’s rich history boasts a Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Giulio Natta, the boom of the plastics industry in the fifties and of design in the sixties, and subsequent affirmations in the field of Research & Development by leading companies of today. These, like Pirelli, have their headquarters in Milan, along with workshops, experimental lines and high-end manufacturing plants,

By Antonio Calabrò

Here: The Settimo Torinese tyre factory in 1962

In the following spread: Pirelli & C. Group in 1922

20 PIRELLI WORLD 21No. 61 — July 2012


while also possessing industrial facilities in the rest of the world in order to keep up with rapidly growing and evolving markets.Pirelli rubber soon became synonymous with cables for the transmission of energy, telegraphic signals, and, later on, voice, and, of course, with tyres for cars, trucks, bicycles and motorcycles, offering solutions for a world in “movement”, in constant change, and tying up with all that was most innovative in the world of industry, from Edison’s electricity (in which Pirelli had a starring role) to the automobile. It is precisely in this sector that technological research enabled the company’s sports experience to trickle down into the everyday sphere: from the first major international competition (the Peking-Paris motor race, won by an Itala with Pirelli tyres in 1907) and the most prestigious automobile races (including Formula 1), down to products for household use. Pirelli products became inno-vative both in terms of innovation and extreme performance, taking over the market, in Italy, but mostly abroad. Pirelli’s first international plant was opened in Spain, in 1902. Next came Great Britain, Argentina and Brazil. In 1922, the 50th anniversary of the company’s found-ing, the company counted 39 commercial structures spread across the world, 9 large industrial plants, and a couple of rubber plantations. Today, it boasts 23 factories in 13 countries (most recently in Russia and Mexico, and soon in Indonesia) and an extensive sales network, which guarantees Pirelli’s presence in 160 countries as the fifth largest tyre producer, and the first in the high-end sector.Pirelli, therefore, is one of the first and the most en-during Italian multinationals. Its success is not just based on geographical presence, but also - and most importantly - on its particular view of the market, of business, and of industrial relations. Pirelli believes in being a world citizen, a global business player, while remaining rooted in the national context: Chinese in China, German in Germany, Turkish in Turkey, Brazil-ian in Brazil, Romanian in Romania, and so on. The Pirelli paradigms - quality, safety, sustainability, pro-ductivity, industrial relations - are applied consistently, ever observing the rules and flexibility of individual markets, using research and development with intel-ligence, applied to the most evident local needs. This is a typically Italian trait: a corporate culture that turns flexibility, adaptability, “customisation” into a tool for competitiveness - and why not? - evolution.

It is precisely this ability that has contributed to Pirelli’s growth over the course of time, overcoming wars, economic crises and social conflicts. Naturally, history is not a linear path, even for a company; it is filled with contradictions, mistakes, successes and failures. It is important to analyse the underlying trends, and to see how tradition and innovation in-teract at crucial moments of change. Indeed, Pirelli has always striven to grow on the global market, with direct investments and a policy of acquisitions and alliances - some more successful than others, and yet others that were a decided fiasco. The objective has always been to achieve a growing presence in the most dynamic and active areas of the world, contributing, as leaders, to the processes of mass motorisation and

consumption growth in Italy and Europe, from the post-war period on, as well as in the rest of the world, exploiting new cycles of economic and social devel-opment. This industrial aim never loses sight of the need to identify a core manufacturing business, in line with demanding criteria of competitiveness, so as to make it in increasingly selective international markets.Spanning almost a century and a half, Pirelli’s history hasn’t been free from crises, even tough, complex, costly ones, both financially and socially. But these have always been tackled successfully, particularly in recent times, when a number of changes were im-posed on the company’s processes and products. The word “crisis” has a twofold implication - a danger to be faced, but also an opportunity for transformation and revitalisation - and this has always been the view adopted in Pirelli.Turning from history to the present day, technologically innovative factories, like the new facility in Settimo Torinese, constitute a powerful image (which goes to show that high-quality products can be made, even in Italy). These factories specialise in premium products, built to stand up to the market’s challenges, in terms of quality, performance and sustainability, and bear witness to the fact that, for Pirelli, history is not just about proudly looking to the past, but above all about preparing for the future.

“Pirelli believes in being a world citizen, a global business player, while remaining rooted in the national context”


Capitalising on the past to build the future

The Great Bicocca Milan Project

The objective of the Great Bicocca Project is to reutilise a large, decommissioned industrial area as part of the constitu-tion of a centrepiece for the metropoli-tan area of north east Milan, a centre

with a mixture of functions and the presence of re-search and a university. It is one of the most extensive organic urban restructuring undertakings ever car-ried out in Europe over the last 30 years and probably the most strategic of the Milanese area.Begun in 1983 at the instigation of Leopoldo Pirelli with convergent decisions by the city authorities and unions, a two-phase competition was launched among invited participants in 1985, with the involvement of 18 of the most important international architects of the period. The first stage of the competition came to an end in 1986, the second in 1988; the project was started in the mid-90s and is now 90% complete.The principal innovations were the constitution of an urban centre as a response to the transformation and expansion of the consolidated peripheries of a European city. All in contrast with both the ideology of the deregu-lation of an industrial city, and that of sprawl which is the unregulated expansion of a scattered periphery. A concept of freedom of development due to the pure absence of limits instead of a project.There are some specific characteristics of the area: to be that new part of the city in a particularly favourable position from the public and private accessibility and transport points of view; being supported and, as in the project proposals, directly connected with the northern park and that of Lambro in the future.To that must also be added the prospect of building the new Great Bicocca as a reference junction and a centrepiece in relation to the transformation of the vast industrial areas now taking place, and which characterise sthe entire north east area of Milan. An urban junction of that kind could also represent a decisive reference to the polarisation of the urbanised and densely productive countryside which has imposed itself on a vast area of the north of the city.In a word, the Great Bicocca project tends to set itself up like a real ‘city centre of a diffused periphery’ and as a contribution to a polycentric vision of the Milanese metropolitan area.The description of the Great Bicocca of the Arcimboldi Project is, in fact, the true description of the components that comprise the image of a city centre: the mixture of functions, activities, social components, the simultane-ous presence of manufacturing construction of vary-ing characters and scales that define the hierarchy of the things and spaces, the presence of the historical depth in the permanence of traces and measure of the

old industrial establishment, the recognisability of the parts, the ability to accept variations, additions, the use of adjectives without losing the identity in that principal of construction. If that ‘urban character’ wants to be something more concrete than a simple metaphor, it must find a way to critically revisit the city’s components in the light of tradition and modernity.

Vittorio Gregotti, born in Novara in 1927, graduated in

architecture in 1952 from the Polytechnic of Milan. From 1953

to 1968 he collaborated with L. Meneghetti and G. Stoppino. In

1974 he founded Gregotti Associati, of which he is president.

He was professor of architectural composition at the IUAV

(Architectural Institute – University of Venice) and taught at

the Faculty of Architecture in Milan and Palermo. He has also

acted as visiting professor at the Universities of Tokyo, Buenos

Aires, Sao Paulo, Lausanne, Harvard, Philadelphia, Princeton,

Cambridge (UK) and at MIT in Cambridge (USA). He was

responsible for the introductory section of the XIII Triennale

(Milan, 1964) which won the International Grand Prix, and from

1974 to 1976 he was director of the visual arts and architectural

section of the Biennale di Venezia. He has been a member of

the Accademia di San Luca since 1976 and the Accademia di

Brera since 1995. He was awarded the Gold Medal for Science

and Culture by the President of Italian Republic in 2000,

an honoris causa degree from the Polytechnic of Prague in

1996, from the Polytechnic of Bucharest in 1999, and from the

University of Porto in 2003. Since 1997 he has been a member

of the BDA (Bund der deutschen Architekten) and from 1999

an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects.

From 1953 until 1955 he was an editor of Casabella; from 1955

to 1963 editor-in-chief of Casabella-Continuità; from 1963 to

1965 director of Edilizia Moderna and was responsible for

the architectural section of the magazine Il Verri. Then, from

1979 to 1998 he was director of Rassegna and from 1982 to

1996 director of Casabella. From 1984 to 1992 he edited the

architectural column of the weekly magazine Panorama. From

1992 to 1997 he collaborated with the daily newspaper Corriere

della Sera, and since 1997 he has collaborated with the daily

newspaper La Repubblica.

From left: Michele Reginaldi, Augusto Cagnardi, Vittorio Gregotti.

By Vittorio Gregotti

Hand drawn sketches of Pirelli’s headquarters by Vittorio Gregotti.

3. Care in the design of the grounds and management of the open and collective spaces: the connecting spaces between what has been built are just as important as the quality of the building itself.

4. A system of mobility that permits efficient and differ-entiated access to that system without accumulating improper internal movements within itself.

5. An urban design ordered by a precise installation principal, of clear legibility, sufficiently embedded as to construct a rich and connected system with urban interiors and an ensemble of differentiated connections between the parts.

Simplicity, organic order, coherence and precision were the qualities necessary in achieving our objectives. Contrary to general opinion, however, the more precise, simple,

The open spaces of Project Bicocca are almost all public, forming a chain of sequences of differentiated environ-ments; to the simplicity of external volumes there cor-responds an internal complexity in which flexibility of use is reversed; a quota of the buildings is constructed through a morphological restructuring and assimilation process of those that exist, in addition the scale of the isolated industrial zone has permitted the establishment of a new hierarchy between roads, squares and buildings.There is no doubt that the grid system on which the es-tablishment of Bicocca is founded is so old that it forbids the very idea of the new in its own right. The principal task of our project is, rather, to think the suitable, the organic, the construction of a distance which is criti-cal due to the current condition of the periphery, avoid part of the city presenting itself as jumbles of objects so sadly disparate as to exceed by a substantial degree the gifts of variety to only give back the useless, pretentious indistinct noise of chaos.After all, a ‘peripheral city centre’ must also have a number of conditions that represent, at the same time, a precise taking of position in the debate on deregulation or regu-lation of design of urban expansion:1. A sufficient articulation of the destination of use and

services and the presence within itself of at least a superior service, of territorial value that makes an exchange with other parts of the city and area nec-essary. It is in relation to the metropolitan area of north Milan that in Project Bicocca, located at a hinge area between itself and the consolidated city, that the presence of the university, a great opera theatre and the headquarters of major international corporations makes sense.

2. A socially differentiated internal use for activities, the ability to shop, mixture of origins, of age and conditions.

organised, suitable and ordered the result will be, the more it will be available to interpretation of use over time and even to its future physical modification. The means by which to achieve simplicity is particularly complex: even in the Bicocca area’s case, simplicity of architectural results has undergone a series of alternative solutions, of responses to complex and contradictory questions. As today’s external and internal periphery teaches us, excessive competitive confusion between the languages of the various architectural objects is to be feared, rather than the disciplined legibility and hierarchy between the parts in relation to the construction of the whole that possesses an attractive identity which is able to last. Many capriciously diverse things, one knows, produce the indistinct sound of uniformity: necessary articulation

and exceptions establish themselves on the clarity of the installation regulation in respect of which one measures the same interpretive differences. Regulation is contrary to uniformity: it is that which enables the rhythm, the sequences, the variety to institute themselves and make the identity of the site visible.Constructing a civil, simple architecture without seeking applause is that which we have tried to do with the Bicocca Project during the delicate passage from start to finish.That passage is describable only by following the differ-entiated aspects of each building. The various hypotheses of specific programmes, the various social structures to which each building heads up and their complex for-tunes, the methods with which one has organised the immovable structure heading up to the operations, and the complicated network of relations with the public institutions.The general morphological references to which the ar-chitecture of Project Bicocca looks are so evident. The names of Terragni and Sironi, especially Sironi whose paintings of the first peripheral industrial year come to mind, even through in the interpretive variations that we have adopted.As a positive response to the general subject of urban periphery, Bicocca is slowly becoming a living ‘city centre of the periphery’ with not only a socially mixed popula-tion of students, blue collar workers, professors, indus-trial employees, various inhabitants; with the presence of diverse private and public functions, services – some most important, like the university or the biggest theatre in Europe – to force the rest of the city to recognise its presence and frequent it.A new place, true to the history of its installation prin-cipals, so precise that it has been able to face 25 years of institutional and market changes with flexibility but without contradicting itself.

HangarBicocca from industrial recovery to contemporary art exhibition centreThe transformer department under construction in March 1964.

Courtesy of the ISEC Foundation-Breda Historic Archive


The Happiest Man, 2000-2012.

Courtesy of Emilia Kabakov.

and tools. But with the outbreak of the First World War, it added aircraft construction, the production of shells, gun carriages and other warlike prod-ucts to its range.Among those factories was HangarBi-cocca, which was then divided into plants of various typologies, origin and extensions. The Shed, for example, was a typical industrial building con-structed of brick, of reduced height, with double sloping roofs and ample skylights, and was already recognisable in photographs that date back to the early Twenties. It housed the produc-tion of locomotive and agricultural machinery components. In 1955, a cubed building was added to the barrel vaulted Shed, which is called the Cube today and is an exhibi-tion space in HangarBicocca.In the decades that followed, the Shed would be flanked by a series of stores and other buildings, which were de-molished around 2000. In 2010, their place was taken by a garden that now

HangarBicocca has been devoted to the production, exhibi-tion and promotion of Italian and inter-

national contemporary art since 2004, and over the last year it has been the subject of an important relaunch process.The property of Pirelli since 2011, after a brief period of closure for re-structuring work, HangarBicocca was opened to the public again on 11 April with new spaces, services and two new exhibitions: NON NON NON by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, and Shadow Play by Hans-Peter Feldmann (12.04-10.06.12).From its inauguration until the end of the exhibitions on 10 June, over 10,000 people visited HangarBicocca, in part as a result of the greater offer of services and recreational facili-ties that even involve the youngsters. As well as the exhibitions, visitors were able to take part in a packed programme of creative activities for children from 4 – 14 years-old, film shows, meetings and debates on the various subjects raised by the exhibi-tions taking place.An opening up to the community and the city of Milan, which makes HangarBicocca one of the catalysts of cultural and social growth in the sur-rounding area, an integral part of the Milanese historic-artistic patrimony.So it is worth recalling the history of this building and how it takes its place in the reconversion of the Bi-cocca quarter of Milan, which was one of the most heavily industrialised areas in Europe but which today has become a new urban centre.The first factories for the produc-tion of steel made their appearance in the area at about the end of the 19th century. Among them was Breda, a company founded in 1886 by engineer Ernesto Breda with whom the story of HangarBicocca is closely associated.In its 200,000 square metres of facto-ries, Breda mainly produced railway carriages, electric and steam locomo-tives, boilers, agricultural machines

hosts the monumental sculpture La Sequenza by Fausto Melotti, a promi-nent Milanese artist on the Italian cultural scene in the 20th century.In 1952, the restructuring of the Breda Group brought with it a transformation of the eight historic sections into eight different companies controlled by the Ernesto Breda holding company. One of the eight was Breda Elettromec-canica, owners of a huge factory now called ‘Le Navate’, which has hosted I Sette Palazzi Celesti by German artist Anselm Kiefer since 2004.Constructed between 1963 and 1965, the warehouse that now unites the Shed with the Cube known as the transformer department, was used for the assembly and testing of high powered electric motors. Its dimen-sions remained intact – 9,500 square metres by about 30 in height – and the building has three naves.In the Sixties, locomotive produc-tion was transferred to Pistoia, while Breda Elettromeccanica continued to make boilers and electrical equipment – until the operation was ceded to Gruppo Ansaldo in the early Eighties. In parallel, the Ernesto Breda holding company went into receivership in 1994, marking the end of that his-toric group.From the Eighties, there began a pro-gressive decommissioning of the old Bicocca industrial area in favour of an almost total urban reorganisation. With the creation of university build-ings, directional centres and private residences that took their place around the Arcimboldi Theatre, Project Bi-cocca got off the ground in 1986 and marked the upgrading of the old Pirelli factories. After a decade of abandonment, HangarBicocca –ex-Ansaldo 17 – was finally acquired by Pirelli RE, which in 2004 decided to transform it into a contemporary art exhibition area.And so we arrive at today’s Han-garBicocca, which will present a new exhibition to the public on 21 June: Equilibrando la Curva, the first personal exposition by Cuban artist

Wilfredo Prieto (supervised by Andrea Lissoni) and The Happiest Man by Russians Ilya and Emilia Kabakov (supervised by Chiara Bertola). Both will be at HangarBicocca until 2 Sep-tember 2012.With his installations, Wilfredo Prieto recounts the infinite possibilities of art and how his purpose is to teach us to look at the world from another, always new perspective. Encounter-ing objects and materials in scale and of a very different nature, the viewer finds him or herself immersed in a situation that calls into discussion one’s own perceptive habits and the instinctive associations between an object, the function and significance that we usually attribute to it.On the other hand, The Happiest Man is a great ‘total installation’ created in 2000 which is to be presented in HangarBicocca in a site-specific ver-sion. The work represents the home of ‘the happiest of men’ who, through his window, he sees the countryside in perpetual movement on film projected onto a screen: a metaphor, yet at the same time ironic and melancholy in the search for escape from reality that characterised the 20th century.And from 20 September until 2 Decem-ber it will be the turn of undisplay, a personal exhibition by Carsten Nicolai, one of the best known German artists who is accredited at an international level. Through his artistic work, Nicolai investigates the relationship between images and sounds and intervenes in the exhibition areas of HangarBicocca by creating, close to I Sette Palazzi Celesti by Anselm Kiefer, an impres-sive installation, supervised by Chiara Bertola and Andrea Lissoni. To Nicolai will be added from 25 October un-til 3 February an exhibition by the Argentinean artist Tomás Saraceno, which is a new project of great visual impact, conceived especially for the exhibition areas of HangarBicocca and supervised by Andrea Lissoni.

Maura Corinaldesi

The video installation of the exhibition

NON NON NON

by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci

Lucchi, supervised byAndrea Lissoni

in collaboration with Chiara Bertola.

2011 a premium yearby FRANCESCO TANZI

The extraordinary performance of our tyres

has enabled us to include double figure

growth indicators in the 2011 report and

accounts compared to the previous year. A

profit of 440.7 million euros and a turnover

consolidated at 5,654.8 million euros, which

indicates a growth of 16.6% compared to 2010.

The operative result (EBIT) after restructuring

charges is 581.9 million euros, an increase of

42.7%, with a result of 312.6 million euros and

an EBIT margin consolidated at 10.3%.

The first three months of 2012 also closed

positively for Pirelli, with turnover at 1,556.5 mil-

lion euros, an increase of 11.1% in respect of the

same period in 2011, taking an operative (EBIT)

result after restructuring charges and a net

profit increase to 46% and 54% respectively,

with an EBIT margin at 13.5% compared to the

10.2% of the same period last year.

Numbers making a continuous improvement

that confirm the strategies and key words of

Pirelli: growth, internationalisation and leader-

ship in the premium segment.


Pirelli’s 2011 report and accounts does not just contain numbers. Figures, graphics, business stories and some key words that express the values at the basis of Pirelli’s philosophy wend their way through 19 tables by Stefan Glerum, and a manuscript by four internationally famous

authors: Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Guillermo Martinez, William Least Heat-Moon and Javier Cercas.An idea conceived to give our shareholders a close-up of the company’s industrial heart, or better, the rubber soul of the organisation.Stefan, is the young artist selected by Pirelli to give its report and accounts a new look, putting to one side the rigours of numbers and concepts, his illustrations translate a number of intangible strategic assets – among them flexibility, technology and innovation – to convey the essence of a company made of numbers, but also of enthusiasm and creativity.

What made you start as an illustrator?I always liked drawing as a kid. Aeroplanes, cars, medieval knights. Subjects I still like drawing today. When I finished high school, I knew I wanted to do something with drawing, but it wasn’t very clear to me what exact direction I wanted to take. I liked illustration, graphic, design, animation and autonomous art. I had the chance to work for a year as an assistant to Dutch comic artist and designer Joost Swarte. Seeing him work made me realise you can pursue multiple disciplines in your career as an artist, so I decided to study illustration as the foundation of my profession.

What do you like about illustrations?Illustration means telling a story with an image, or representing a subject, as opposed to an abstract image that represents itself. Illustra-tion is a medium to deliver messages and is therefore very powerful. To me it becomes interesting when you can both deliver the message that fits the subject you’re working with and also incorporate your own ideas and identity as an artist.

Where does your inspiration come from?I get my inspiration from multiple sources. Boyhood fascinations, like planes, cars, World War Two miniature model kits. But I am also inspired by the colours of pictures in second hand books about birds, old cars and old costumes. Stylistically I am inspired by avant-garde art and design of the beginning of the 20th century and Clear Line comic art by Herge, Joost Swarte and Chris Ware. I try to mix those sources of inspiration with modern themes I personally encounter.

Your style infuses everything from Art Deco to Bauhaus, Russian Constructivism, Psychedelia and also the world of the cartoonists. Did any artistic movement inspire the drawings you did for Pirelli? Or did you feel ‘independent’ from any cultural input?Working on the illustrations for the annual report, I had to find out what style would work for the various Pirelli keywords I had to il-lustrate. Some worked better with a more stylised, geometric almost ‘futurist’ approach, others worked better with a little bit more of a comic art approach. It depends on the subject matter. in the end, the annual report features a good mixture of illustrations with various sources of input.

Much of your work is based on passions from your childhood. Among these there is love for racing cars, a sport very much part of Pirelli’s business; maybe it was simple for you to find inspiration?I’m definitely a big fan of racing and sports cars. So I could use that enthusiasm for a couple of the illustrations. However, having visited the Pirelli office at the start of the project I discovered that Pirelli is a company which is about much more than making tyres for F1 cars.

The city where you live and work is also a source of inspiration. Has it been helpful to see Milan, the city of Futurism, and visit Pirelli’s offices and labs to create your illustrations?It was great to have been in Milan. I was blown away by the Pirelli office built around the majestic chimney. I was given a tour around the Pirelli Foundation and I saw a fantastic part of design history of the company there. Seeing original works in the archive was an especially inspiring experience. And seeing the research and development section was very interesting. After seeing all of that, I was taken to the Novecento museum to see some original Futurist work. That was great too.

What is the process that leads to the final result? How long does it take to get there?In the case of the annual report, there was a process of making a lot of different sketches for the different keywords to see what would work best for Pirelli, Francesco Valtolina (the art director) and me. After decid-ing what captured Pirelli’s spirit best I would make the final drawing. That’s a process of first sketching with pencil and tools like rulers and a compass. When that’s done I ink the drawing with a dipping pen and India ink. I scan the black and white line drawing in, and use the computer to add colour. The overall time it takes varies with each drawing. Some will take longer in the sketch process, others in the line drawing, and some will take longer in the computer process. It’s safe to say you need patience and time.

Stefan Glerum Stefan spent four years

in Breda studying illustration at the Academy

St. Joost. He also worked as an assistant to

one of the country’s most celebrated comic

artists, Joost Swarte. Stefan Glerum’s style is

like a melting pot of illustration heritage. While

its subconscious familiarity has universal ap-

peal, his work is also a study point for those

with knowledge of graphic design history.

His work is inspired by early 20th Century

movements such as Art Deco, Bauhaus, Ital-

ian Futurism and Russian Constructivism,

which he combines with popular themes,

executed in a style reminiscent of the clear line.

Art & the TyreBy Carlo Saponaro

Pirelli & C. report, 1883 (Historical Archive)

the new & the bestby JAVIER CERCAS

In 1925, André Gide had the protagonist of Les Faux-Monnay-

eurs say: “I have thought that often, in art, and especially in

literature, the only ones who count are those who venture into

the unknown”. Many years earlier, Charles Baudelaire summed

up the same idea in a single, unforgettable line of an unforget-

table poem, Le Voyage: “Au fond de l’inconnu pour trouver du

nouveau”. That is probably the main aim of any modern writer

(or modern artist): to discover new lands, to find something

that, before he existed, nobody had seen, or at least had not

seen as he was able to see it. This is an ambition unknown to

the ancients, for whom literature or art meant above all the imi-

tation of models. However, in literature or in art, the new is not

necessarily the best: nobody can claim that Velázquez is worse

than Picasso, Cervantes worse than Joyce, or John Ford not as

good as Francis Ford Coppola. And yet I am sure that almost

any automobile manufactured by any factory nowadays is

better –more rapid, safer, and cheaper – than almost any auto-

mobile produced no more than fifty years ago. Modern art and

technology share the necessary adventure of finding the new,

but only technology can fulfil the impossible dream of modern

art: to ensure that almost always, new is best.

Translated by Nick Caistor

Where Tires Have Taken USby WILLIAM LEAST HEAT-MOON

Americans, to be sure, have never had by any definition a

national religion. Instead, what we have is a communal belief, a

secular doctrine that redemptions and regenerations of many

sorts proceed from roadways. The very act of putting rubber

to pavement for a long-distance journey is often a quest for a

renewed and rebuilt life, for salvation from past errors, a try at

finding new fulfillments and new people and places in some

new land lying at the end of a road.

My recurring notion that the blue field of the American flag

would be more historically symbolic with not fifty stars but

half-a-hundred tires is a nutty conceit, but nevertheless it’s a

jest expressing a significant fact of contemporary American

culture.

While it remains true that feet and hooves and steel rails have

fundamentally helped construct the infrastructure of the

United States, it is vulcanized, treaded tires that have carried

the life into the grand structures to create the united in our

national name.

The idea was to design a book which would not

exclusively be a collection of data. We wanted to

recount Pirelli from a different perspective, not

exclusively technical. The annual report becomes

an instrument of communication. The three

volumes, in different formats of different sizes, are

inside a box which contains them and in some

way hides and prefaces that which will follow.

They are an attempt at making the relationship

with the book more emotional and physical

Francesco Valtolina, art director

34 AIPIRELLI WORLD No. 62 — July 2012

Inspector Manfredi waved for them to show the man into his

office. Although he was elderly, he walked in calmly, erect and with

a lively twinkle in his eye.

‘Mr. Rinaldi, you’ll be wondering why we called you in,’ said

Manfredi, motioning him towards a chair. ‘The thing is, we

asked who knew about cars in the city, and several people

mentioned your name.’

‘Well, I do know a bit,’ said Rinaldi, with proud modesty. ‘I’ve been a

taxi-driver all my life, and cars have always fascinated me.’

‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ Manfredi said. ‘We’re involved in a

tricky case, and thought you might be able to help us. The case

is still being investigated, so I can only give you a brief outline. A

certain gentleman (let’s call him X) went into a classic car dealer’s

showroom. He asked to test drive a 1960s Ferrari coupé. He drove

the car out to the ring road and, according to his testimony, on

a bend he hit a huge puddle of early morning rainwater, which

caused him to skid onto the verge. As ill-luck would have it, he

knocked down a school-teacher who every morning hitched a lift

into the city from that very spot.’

‘But you think that in fact it was no accident,’ said the elderly

man, with a knowing smile.

‘We investigated Mr. X’s background. We learnt that his father, a

well-known millionaire who is now very ill, had an illegitimate son.

As chance would have it, that boy was the school-teacher who

was run over. All this was meant to be a complete secret that no-

one, not even Mr. X, was aware of. Yet we were able to discover it.’

‘So this Mr. X could have somehow found it out as well,’ Rinaldi

said. ‘And now, thanks to the accident, he’s the only heir once

more. I see where you are heading...do you know how fast the car

was going?’

‘There’s a speed camera nearby, so we have already been

able to check that he was going at 110 kilometres an hour, the

maximum permitted.’

‘Well then,’ said the elderly man, as if confirming something to

himself, ‘in my opinion, you are right.’

How can you say that so quickly?’ said Manfredi, intrigued. ‘With

so little information, and without the technical report? What do

you base your conclusion on?’

‘In the first place, I am ruling out any problems with the steering or

brakes. I know the car salesman, and all his cars are impeccable.

That only leaves the tyres. Thanks to a simple deduction, I’m sure

they must be Pirelli: I would wager that’s the case. Am I right?’

Inspector Manfredi consulted the file, and nodded in

astonishment. ‘How did you know?’ he asked.

‘We’re talking about the queen of coupés,’ the old man said.

‘And how do you dress a queen? In a flimsy cotton dress? Or in

the kingdom’s best fabrics?’

‘I see, go on,’ said Manfredi.

‘The rest is elementary,’ the old man continued. ‘The tyres

must be from the same date, because that’s what collectors

want: everything has to match. And by the 1960s, Pirelli had

introduced its Cinturato radial tyres to all sports cars. Fangio

had tested them in Formula One, with a pioneering design

that gave them incredible road holding. Therefore, with those

tyres and at that speed, it’s impossible for him to have skidded,

however big the puddle was.’

‘Benissimo,’ cried Manfredi, ‘you’ve been a great help.’

‘Really, it was nothing,’ said Rinaldi, getting to his feet. ‘Now, if you

don’t mind, I have to go: I left my taxi double-parked.’

Translated by Nick Caistor

How to dress a queen? By GUILLERMO MARTINEZ

AJ PIRELLI WORLD

With the inauguration of Pirelli’s new plant in Guanajuato, Mexico, in May, the total number of the group’s plants around the world rose to 22 and Pirelli’s strategy of local-for-local

production and distribution was thus strengthened in the Nafta region. The local-for-local idea, which means reducing costs and increasing ef-ficiency by bringing production closer to end markets, is also accompa-nied by an ever growing commitment to the modernization of Pirelli’s production facilities which in turn means more automation and greater attention to environmental issues around the world. The Mexico plant will soon be followed by new or upgraded plants in Russia, Argentina and Indonesia. This will ensure that by 2015 a majority of Pirelli’s production (60%) will be located in facilities under 10 years old, with all that the good news that implies in terms of efficiency, energy savings and working conditions. The global expansion of the group is clearly also reflected in the make-up of the workforce. Europe still remains the area with the largest number of employees, with 42% of the total, however South America represents 38% and Asia Pacific 6% and Middle-East-Africa 9%. As already mentioned, Pirelli goes to great lengths to ensure that all its plant and the production processes are as environmentally friendly as possible. At the new Mexico plant, this included the replanting in the area of trees that had been uprooted to facilitate the plant’s construc-tion and the creation of a water treatment centre and installation of a factory-wide system of sensors to reduce water and energy wastage to an absolute minimum. In fact, Pirelli has set ambitious but feasible environmental targets for the whole group. The goal for 2015, is to reduce group CO2 emissions by 15% compared with 2009, while over the same period water withdrawal will also fall by 15%. Ralph Traviati

Pirelli extends group’s international production presence

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