FUTURE CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Growth: Ideology & Innovation

With success comes the pressure to grow. And with growth comes the challenge of maintaining ideological focus and cultural coherence. As the organization grows, the coherence of internal culture – and hence ability to act in a coordinated, meaningful and nimble way (the hallmarks of Valcucine's success to date)- can be tested. In this context one must also look at the organization/ownership structure. Much of the SME industry in Italy is in family/private ownership. This enables fast, flexible decision making, leveraging the power of intuition and opportunity. When companies, whose innovation model is based on this flexibility, change ownership structure – for example by going public – their decision making can change, in fundamental ways the way they innovate which in turn can make future growth a challenge. Valcucine has continually developed and sustained significant internal education program, to continually instill a culture of curiosity, understanding and collaboration. These efforts can contribute to the overall strategy of bringing coherence to the innovation engine as the company grows.

Positioning: Exclusivity & Ethics

Today the value proposition of ideology is limited to an exclusive niche- Albeit wonderful, these products are expensive. The challenge moving forward is avoiding framing ideologically driven products as strictly exclusive. The strategy taken by Valcucine is that of change agent. It will most likely continue to compete in the luxury segment, but the diffusion of positive design ideologies throughout the system of production (the industrial cluster) produces a trickle-down effect, whereby businesses like Biesse can pass this benefit onto their clients. As such the opportunity to effect a broad range of consumers and product types is great.

Beyond "green": 360° Design

In this context the term refers to a total design approach in response to a need to pursue and sustain a complete, comprehensive, and coherent vision. Companies competing on ideology cannot afford to pick and choose causes as a reductive vision can potentially create a back-lash. It is hard to imagine producing environmentally sustainable products without also considering the social conditions within which they are manufactured. Would we believe the ideological sincerity of a green product if– for example – it is made using child-labor? Thus to sustain itself, ideological design must confront a 360 ° approach and consider all ethical/moral aspects of its actions. Here we can look to Valcucine as an example of not only a coherence of action within the "green" domain (reforestation efforts, as an example) but also of a company that continues to strive to broaden their ideological coherence with its Hability products.