When we speak about work, we always speak about finding a job or receiving a job, but never speak about creating our own job!
Finally, start-ups are becoming part of the Italian Government Agenda: the Italian Minister of Economic Development, Infrastructure and Transport Corrado Passera announced a series of government initiatives to support innovative startups.
Corrado Passera was one of the many important personalities attending the convention Doing Business in Italy is now possible: a plan for making Italy grow in the world, which took place yesterday, 13 aprile, 2012, at LUISS University (Rome.) The event was promoted by Italian Business & Investment Initiative in collaboration with Intesa Start Up Initiative, Innogest, Mind The Bridge and BAIA.
Passera’s words aimed to confirm Government’s commitment to sustain the development of the Italian start-ups’ ecosystem: “Start-ups are central in our agenda for growth. Italy needs to recover from the recession faster than agencies’ expectations: start-ups are one of the main tools we have planned to use to create new jobs and accelerate economic growth in order to restart Italian economy.”
The first step is to change Italian culture: “When we speak about work, we always speak about finding a job or receiving a job, but never speak about creating our own job! Nowadays, new technologies have reduced the entry barriers against the creation of new innovative enterprises, but I believe that in order to exploit this phenomenon we firstly have to change our culture: indeed, culture of entrepreneurship comes along with culture of risk, which is possible only if we accept the possibility of entrepreneurial failure.”
However, it is not just a matter of culture: “We have to change our culture, but we also need to change our legislation: indeed, our legislative framework must incorporate the idea that in order to succeed, you have to try, to make mistakes and fail. Our legislation system penalise people who fail, while in the successful model of Silicon Valley when you fail they always give you another chance!”
In particular as to the ICT sector, the Italian Government has set up a Digital Agenda: “Italy is late in the ICT rush, but we have a great potential and I am convinced that, if we are able to stimulate the creation of new innovative start-ups, we will succeed in reducing the gap between us and more advanced countries.”
Passera concludes with a strong message: “We want to obtain concrete results in few months: we put together twelve globally recognised experts in venture capital and start-ups in order to identify which are the legislative changes needed in order to create the most suitable environment to help the creation of new start-ups and their development. I believe we will be able to propose a new legislative act, let us say the Startup-Italia Act, within this summer.”
