The culture of risk-taking, enterprises and innovation,
which are related,
involves the admission of mistakes,
the admission of failure.
Only if you try, you can eventually fail.
To make a mistake in Italian also means to leave the main road,
and that's how you find new ways to get a result.
We must reward those who do that.
When I made the law on start-ups,
I asked to edit the insolvency law,
because that law in Italy put a sort of permanent mark
on those who went bankrupt.
However, those who try in innovation, in research,
in start-ups have at least 50% chance to fail.
They should be punished, but also encouraged to stand up
and start all over again.
The idea of falling and getting up again is part of life.
And I have tried to teach that to my children,
as physiology of life, it's not a pathology of life,
making a mistake, falling, starting all over again.
The concept of competence has two faces,
and it's important to know this.
You can be competent…
...by choosing the maximum of specialisation.
The world needs great specialists in any field,
being it scientific, humanistic, or legal, fields of any kind.
Specialised competence requires a constant update,
and an ability to discover what is changing in the world
in any field of specialisation, always.
This is the competence deriving from specialisation.
Then there's a rarer competence, which doesn’t mean it’s better,
but it's a precious ability,
which is that of gathering competences,
which means being an entrepreneur, or being a public administrator,
being an all-round manager,
being an entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurs, or public administrators,
up to politicians,
if they do their job properly, they have a different kind of competence.
They gather specialists, other competences, leaders,
they are orchestra conductors,
who have to gather the best instruments,
without necessarily being an expert in each instrument.
They are trainers, facilitators of other competences.
We might define such competence as holistic, synthetic,
the competence of aggregating, of leadership,
it is a competence that one can develop.
It's not something that you either have or not have.
You either are an artist, or you are not an artist.
You can develop such precious and necessary competence
by gaining experience in different fields,
in different functions,
by accepting the challenge to make new things,
to start from zero, several times during your lifetime,
and it's one of the biggest needs of our countries,
and one of the rarest ones.
Over time, I have understood, with myself,
first with people close to me, then with those who worked with me,
that rationality is indeed very important, your mind,
but your heart, which means ideals, your guts, which means fear,
feelings, difficulties...
are as important as your mind.
When you manage people,
when you think to your future, when you build your own family,
this mistake, or better, such limited vision
of the rational aspect of life gives space to a broader freedom,
where feelings have more space.