A few days ago CENSIS, the most important study center among those who analyze the Italian society, published a study which shows that foreign investment in Italy have decreased by 58% from the beginning of the crisis. We also learned that, while still in second place in Europe (and fifth in the whole world) for manufacturing, Italy attracts only 1,6% of the total foreign investments in the world. So, does this mean that we the Italians do not know how to attract investments?
Many Italians who these days seem to be in the business of complaint, and only in that one, would probably answer: yes. But in California, they don't think so. In the office of the Governor of the richest State among the 50, where Silicon Valley is, the global benchmark for investors, funds and venture capital, the manager in charge to attract investments comes from Padua, Italy. His name is Davide Bolognesi, he is one of the many young Italians who hold high the name of our country in the United States: a demonstration of how good Italy could do, thanks to its citizens, if we could get rid of the chains self-imposed by ourselves.
Davide, how did you get from Padua to Sacramento, to work for the Governor of California?
In 2012, in the midst of economic crisis, I moved with my family to California in search of new opportunities that then were - but unfortunately still now are - missing for too many young people. I arrived with nothing and like many before me, I started from scratch, working as a waiter, then getting a part-time job at Google, and now I'm in the Governor's office for economic development and trade.
Please describe us your job. Do you have to deal with Italy?
My job is mainly about the attraction of international investments in California, as the representative of the State at the Ministry of Commerce in Washington.
Compared to Italy, my office is a mixture of Invitalia and the Ministry of Economic Development. To put it simply, if someone walks into any American embassy or Consulate around the world and shows interest in starting a business in California, the request ends up on my desk.
In the same way I deal with promoting the State around the world as an ideal place for innovative and cutting edge companies. Since I have been covering this feature, I have met many Italian entrepreneurs seeking the internationalization of their company as a means to remain globally competitive.
I would like to support many other Italian entrepreneurs to open an office here in California, as well as to promote greater exchanges with the Italian institutions, that could learn a lot from a region that has managed to get a world record in areas highly developed in Italy too, like high technologies, agriculture, food and advanced services.
You work for a public institution in a State in which the public system is stronger than the United States average. This means that, from this point of view, California should be more similar to Italy - where the public sector rules in every field – then any other State. As an Italian who now lives and works right in that area, do you see differences between California's public system and the Italian one?
I never worked in the public sector in Italy, so I can only report my impressions as an ordinary citizen who has lived in Italy and now is living in California. Everywhere you go, the public administration is based on a more or less cumbersome bureaucracy: what is notorious in California, however, is that citizens expect services to meet their expectations. If a service is not good, individuals let their voice be heard, because here the individual and his rights count for much. All things considered, here the attitude in the public sector seems to me a bit less formal than in Italy; but of course, like everywhere else, there are exceptions.
Those in Italy who do not know how common is that the capitals of the American States do not coincide with the most famous cities, would never think that instead of Los Angeles or San Francisco, Sacramento is the where the Governor is. Please describe our readers this city? Is there an Italian community there?
Sacramento, like many others that in America have a specific governmental function, is a "secluded" city, compared to Los Angeles or San Francisco: but by no means is unimportant. In California, in fact, when it comes to politics we talk about what's happening in Sacramento: sometimes with hope, sometimes with irony, as in Italy. The first generation Italian community, those who just recently arrived in the US, practically does not exist: Italians are very numerous in California, but focused almost primarily in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.
Italian Americans, on the other hand, are very well organized in associations that share a nostalgic feeling of the beautiful country abandoned a hundred years ago by their grandparents and uncles in search of fortune. The city has also an honorary consul who takes care of the needs of the small communities of Italian origin.
You are a young Italian who had success abroad: in 2012 more than 26,000 left Italy, as you did, 10,000 more than 2008, the year of the beginning of the crisis. Viewed from California, by a person who knows what it means to exercise public government functions, what would be the first three measures you would like to absolutely introduce in our country?
I would like to extend an invitation to the Mr. Giancarlo Innocenzi Botti, President of Invitalia - with which I share, inter alia, the origin from Veneto – to come here in California, and see how this State by itself attracts the 50% of the foreign direct investments of the whole USA: an invitation that maybe We the Italians can deliver.
The three proposals that I have already mentioned a few months ago to the then Ministry of Economic Development Flavio Zanonato and I would like to mention to the new Ministry Federica Guidi are: a) the creation of a network of Italian commercial and investment offices abroad, financed by privates; 2) a more precise definition of the Investor Visa, already in the Destinazione Italia plan introduced by the Letta government; 3) a strong support by the Italian consular network to the web portal created by the law "against the exodus" n. 238 of 2010, called "La Fonderia dei Talenti" (The Foundry Talent www.lafonderia.org), that aims to locate the presence of Italians brains abroad.
These three proposals could, at no cost to the Italian taxpayers, lead to a strong increase in foreign investments in Italy as well as promote the much needed internationalization of the Italian firms, allowing them to compete in the world through the strong presence of talented Italians all over the world.
