What allows companies to create a competitive advantage is the ability to innovate their businesses in order to face quick changes, the frantic fluctuations of market demand and, just like it is happening during this complicated and horrific moment, to face emergency situations.
COVID-19 sanitary emergency has imposed new challenges for entrepreneurs and managers of the textile care sector (and not only) who will need to set new strategies to guarantee the operative continuity of the production and deal with the changes in the years to come. Yet, the entrepreneurs cannot use the defensive approach only, they need to relaunch their businesses, which is done through investments. Over the recent years, the 4.0 Industry has been one of the few incentivization measures for production and technological innovation that has worked.
During this economic pandemic, the recourses are rather scarce which is another reason why they should be used cautiously. This is why it is important not to lose the compass. These years, we have become familiar with words like Hyper-Amortization and Super-Amortization or a patent box, that have actually been a shot in the arm for businesses that applied: essential resources to enter through the main door of what has been called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Surely, from 2016 to 2020, 4.0 Industry was undermined, made less attractive. It is however possible, if not necessary, to relaunch it. The figures provided by the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano speak for themselves. The market of products and services in Italy, 4.0 Industry, is 3.9 billion euros. From 2016 to 2019, the value increased by more than 300%.
The certainties of the past have clashed with the unknown of year 2020, but to restart means to invest. We cannot forget, just like in the evolution of species, about how we passed from mechanization to electrification starting from the end of the 1700s until today, to arrive to digitalization that is currently dominating our industrial development and all the aspects of our lives. What does bringing the internet into a factory mean? It means creating automation processes, providing machines with software that allows them to update themselves, the ability to connect, exchange information with customers or even to activate machines’ self-maintenance process.
This is the reality we are looking at and a great frontier that awaits us.
As a renowned British economist, John Maynard Keynes used to say during the first half of the 1900s, “successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others”.
by Marzio Nava
Detergo Magazine July/August 2020
