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“I am transforming the family business and I know that it is not what my parents would want. I’m not exactly following in their footsteps: by definition, they were “mattress industrialists”. I am not and never want to fall into this category again. For some time, I wanted to be, intensely. When, in December 2002, I found myself at a crossroads and had to decide whether to “betray” the family business for a prestigious job at Bosch – where I ultimately risked becoming just a “number”— or to stay there, I chose my family company Dormiflex. But now I feel that I must continue the work of transforming what I inherited from my parents, and move towards a different company model that is more appropriate to the time the economy and our sector are going through, but also more relevant to my own inclinations: a digital company, multiple languages and different countries. I feel that the time has come to break the deadlock and bet on the transformation of the company according to my own dreams, according to a plan that is becoming increasingly clear to me. The Dormiflex marathon has begun”.
At Dwell, we're staging a minor revolution. We think that it's possible to live in a house or apartment by a bold modern architect, to own furniture and products that are exceptionally well designed, and still be a regular human being. We think that good design is an integral part of real life. And that real life has been conspicuous by its absence in most design and architecture magazines.
Summer 1965. “Mariacristina! How long have you been on that swing?” “Mum, you know I love it...”. It’s a summer Sunday afternoon. My mother is busy in the kitchen preparing dinner. Every now and then she casts a glance at me swinging in the garden of our house in the mountains in Usseglio. My swing is beautiful. It’s red. When I swing, I see the whole world rise and fall around me. Thirty-seven years later. Massimo, my husband, has resigned from his company. One day, last spring, he came home and said with excitement in his voice: “I’ve found a small company that makes keys... it seems they are selling it. Should I try to buy it?”. “Massimo, let’s not miss this opportunity”. A few days later we found ourselves in front of a notary: “Mr. Bianchi, please, sign here: from this moment on Keyline is yours”. After making a toast with our glasses filled with Prosecco, Massimo asked me: “What do you think about being Keyline’s Chief Executive?”
This work commemorates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Italian Association of Family Enterprises (AIDAF). It does not adopt a retrospective perspective, nor is it a historical account. It is an essay about the future, taking the form of a dialogue between family businesses and the Italian academic community, combining scholarly rigor with pragmatism. It provides tangible points of reflection aimed at constructing and subsequently preserving the continuity and sustainability of the family-enterprise system. The dialogue is composed of twenty-five letters and their corresponding responses, organized into five sections: family, ownership, youth, business, and sustainability....
It has been clear for many years that the ways in which archaeology is practised have been a direct product of a particular set of social, cultural, and historical circumstances - archaeology is always carried out in the present. More recently, however, many have begun to consider how archaeological techniques might be used to reflect more directly on the contemporary world itself: how we might undertake archaeologies of, as well as in the present. This Handbook is the first comprehensive survey of an exciting and rapidly expanding sub-field and provides an authoritative overview of the newly emerging focus on the archaeology of the present and recent past. In addition to detailed archaeolog...