What will be the future of Italian micro-businesses?

A few days ago I went by chance to the industrial area of Rozzano (province of Milan) and I noticed, once again, that this is an area full of micro-warehouses of a few hundred square meters each. This is not a particularity of Rozzano but rather a representation of industrial areas typical of Italy, as evidence of the fact that the industrial fabric of our country consists of tens of thousands of micro-enterprises.

I am writing this because – if I think of Italy as an economic system that is part of a global world, which is following a very specific path towards technological innovation and digital transformation – this notion of this business fabric of ours is a little troubling for me. We Italians are creative, brilliant, we are experts at improvising and sorting things out and so on. All very important factors but in themselves not enough.

Follow my reasoning.
What is industry 4.0 for? Why should a company evolve and align with today’s principles and standards of 4.0? Undoubtedly to become a modern enterprise, in line with the current historical-economic epoch. But not only this.

Evolving towards key 4.0 is also useful (and, I would say above all) to communicate, collaborate and interact – according to current and future standards – with customers, suppliers, colleagues, partners and so on.

This means that collaborations between companies of this type will be facilitated. An Italian company in line with Industry 4.0 standards, for example, will have much less difficulty in finding synergies with a German company that will be 4.0 in turn, than with the historic Italian supplier left to work with the traditional method.
Therefore

when automation, digitisation and interconnection become a habit, transforming the modus operandi of a company, it will be increasingly difficult for that company to go back. With this I don’t mean to say that a 4.0 company will no longer be able to work with traditional companies but it will certainly do so with greater effort.

Therefore, as long as the traditional enterprise remains the only possibility for the 4.0 enterprise, nothing will change. But when good alternatives begin to appear, then it is very likely – in my opinion – that those who have not embraced the fourth industrial revolution seriously risk being left behind.
No-one, of course, can know exactly what will happen in the future, but the risk of the situation of companies in our country evolving in this direction is very high, especially if we think that only companies in profit can benefit from the tax relief being provided by the 4.0 Business Plan.

The situation for the Italian economic system, therefore, could become really very worrying, but with this I am certainly not stating that there are no solutions, quite the opposite!
One possibility is that small, non-evolved companies will disappear permanently, perhaps because they are acquired by larger ones, which will increasingly expand.

Another possibility – which I hope will be the case – is that our micro-enterprises continue to exist but in the form of business networks.

I realize that the Enterprise Networks Decree foreseen by the 2010 Stability Manoeuvre has proved to be a failure for many industries. It is also true, however, that if this really should end up being the only alternative to avoid disappearing from the world market then perhaps it might provide the input for a greater commitment from everyone..

And therefore, on the one hand, individual companies will have to change their basic attitude that very often means putting personal and business interests ahead of shared ones.
And, on the other hand, our Government will have to come up with something different from what has been taking place up until now, assuming responsibility for filling the gap left by the 4.0 Industry/Business Plan of recent years in order to avoid the collapse of thousands of micro-enterprises that, as I stated above, with their own economic structure cannot access government concessions.