Alberto Nicolini: “The city of Pico is always up to the task”
The editor of distrettobiomedicale.it and co-organizer of “Innovabiomed” in the secrets of a territory full of history as well as rich in great innovations
In Mirandola, where Emilia stretches out its hand to the Veneto and Lombardy, where the Pico family reigned for four hundred years over a handkerchief of land erected as a sovereign state, a buffer between the Mantua of the Gonzagas and the Modena and Ferrara of the Este family, and where people reacted to a disastrous earthquake by increasing the value of exports and the territorial Gross Domestic Product, there is a man who has taken on a courageous and important initiative.
Alberto Nicolini, Mirandola DOC, born in 1957, founder forty-five years ago of Radio Pico, is in fact the publisher and promoter of the portal distrettobiomedicale.it, whose purpose is the enhancement of the main continental district of production and research of devices in the biomedical field, the main antagonist of the similar clusters of Minneapolis and Los Angeles, to reach which, however, must cross an ocean.
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Accountant since 1976, freelancer two years later, entrepreneur and board member of several companies since 1986 (including a multi-utility in Emilia and several, important manufacturing industries), doctor in Economics and Business Management in 2015, Alberto Nicolini is currently the controlling shareholder of a group formed by four companies, employing a total of twenty-five people.
The sectors of activity include publishing (three radio stations and the mentioned specialized publications in the biomedical sector), communication services, press office and event organization, as well as networking activities in the European Union, with a particular focus in the market areas of Modena, Reggio nell’Emilia, Bologna, Ferrara, Mantova, Brescia, Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Rovigo and Trento, there where in Italy entrepreneurship is both law and custom.
We interviewed him on the eve of the second edition of “Innovabiomed”, the network place for biomedical innovation that will be welcomed by the Palexpo Congress Center in Verona on July 2 and 3 and that debuted in 2018 in the same proscenium scaligero…
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You were the creator of the Internet portal distrettobiomedicale.it, creating an aggregator of thematic news on the Mirandola industrial cluster that previously did not exist. What prompted you to do this, what is its history and what long-term goals do you have?
“In 2011, I met a delegation of Russian Military Health executives and was introduced as the publisher of ‘La Plastica della Vita’, the specialized magazine for Mirandola’s Biomedical District. When they asked me, naturally and spontaneously, what the Mirandola Biomedical District was, I realized that a brief answer was necessarily limiting and that there was no complete presentation of our industrial reality. I talked about it with Dr. Mario Veronesi, who was helping me with the newspaper, which bore the same name as his book, ‘La Plastica della Vita’ (The Plastic of Life), proposing the idea of a web portal. The idea was shot down with a cruel comment in dialect that I spare you. I didn’t give up and as soon as he saw the project taking shape, he realized its usefulness and became a supporter, to the point that he went around companies to promote it, as you can see from the photos that we publish in the gallery of the site. Years later, the objectives are still relevant: to attract expertise and investment, presenting the value of the Mirandola Biomedical District through news and opportunities for multidisciplinary collaboration, with particular attention to innovation”.
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The organization of a network place in the sector represents a considerable leap in quality and quantity for an entrepreneur previously devoted to publishing and business consulting. What exactly is “Innovabiomed”, what perspectives does it have and why did you choose Verona as the location?
“The idea of an event dedicated to innovation for the biomedical sector was born from the collaboration with Medtech Italy, a fair that was held in Modena in 2013 and 2014. The German organizers had chosen us for communication and press office, but when they changed ownership, Medtech Italy was merged into Medtech Europe in Stuttgart and, therefore, the work done for two years with the Modena event would have been lost. I looked for the managers of Democenter Modena, a public body that had collaborated with Medtech Italy, and met them at the Technopole of Mirandola to propose the development of a shared project, but this did not happen. A few months later, Marco Gibertoni (Mirandola’s manager in the sector) and Dr. Carlo Adami (a doctor from Verona), contacted us to illustrate their project, already approved by Veronafiere, which would later become ‘Innovabiomed’, the network place for the biomedical sector. Innovabiomed’ is dedicated to the meeting and confrontation between experts in the production of medical devices, professionals and researchers in the biomedical sector, in order to connect different disciplines, skills and professionalism, thus contributing to the growth of a sector of primary importance for the country, that is Italy, and for the European Union”.
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The biomedical district of Mirandola is a European excellence in analogy with Los Angeles and Minneapolis, which, however, are on the other side of the Atlantic. What are its strengths, weaknesses and what does it lack to improve further?
“The main strengths, in my opinion, are three: 1) the close collaboration with physicians and researchers; 2) the very high standard of expertise spread at all levels in the production cycle of disposable devices and biomedical equipment, where large teams of specialists work in the factories that today are owned by multinational companies, but which were founded by Dr. Mario Veronesi, his associates and the first generation of managers formed between the 1970s and 1990s; 3) the same standard of expertise spread among the highly specialized suppliers in the area, indispensable partners for product and process innovation. In order to continue to improve, it is in fact necessary to maintain the ‘method’ and to encourage small and medium-sized companies to open up to Europe and the world, committing themselves to give continuity to the business activity in the very delicate historical moment of the inevitable generational changes, inside and outside the family environment”.
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You say you were inspired by Mario Veronesi, the father of the biomedical cluster as well as a true serial creator of new businesses. What has remained in Mirandola of his teaching, in general in the collective memory, and what is your personal source of inspiration?
“The ‘method’ I mentioned earlier. Dr. Veronesi has always chosen to form teams of specialists in their respective areas of expertise and when a journalist asked him why he had always founded his companies in Mirandola, he replied, ‘I like the people of this land. literal even in his ungrammaticality. Then, to keep my feet firmly on the ground, every now and then I have to smile thinking about how ‘colorful’ the Doctor’s comments would have been on things that happen in the District and to me in particular, like this interview”.
Si parla ancora di #Innovabiomed2018. #RassegnaStampa #VeronaSette @pressVRfiere pic.twitter.com/XcW8aF4SCa
— Innovabiomed Official (@Innovabiomed) February 9, 2018
Your group was the winner, in partnership with other European realities coordinated by the Technical University of Athens, of the community project “ImPURE”, which has great relevance to the biomedical district of Mirandola. Can you explain what it is about, what is the role of your portal and what are its objectives?
“The imPURE project is one of the twenty-three selected and financed under the EU Horizon 2020 program to address the issues that have emerged with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic; in particular, the project includes the creation of a supply chain platform where companies specialized in the various stages of production of biomedical devices and equipment will be inserted. Our portal distrettobiomedicale.it has been recognized the role of networker, just for the relationships and contacts developed in the sector during all these years. After we have successfully completed this project, which expires in May 2022, we will try to exploit this experience and the relationships acquired to develop others, always putting health at the center”.
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What do you expect from your co-workers and what attitudes bother you the most in others, especially in the work or business environment?
“I think that honesty, commitment to improving one’s skills and team spirit are necessary characteristics in everyone’s life, and therefore also at work. The attitudes that annoy me the most are those of those who want to make believe they are what they are not, with the arrogance of the mediocre”.
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Is there anything you reproach the local, Modenese and Emilia-Romagna ruling class of the past, in relation to the territory in which you live? And what does he ask of current politics?
“Our territory has been marginalized for decades by provincial and regional political leaders. Then, because of the 2012 earthquake, they realized the importance of our companies and our skills and they tried to make up for it, even though after nine years we still don’t have adequate infrastructure and we have no idea when and if we will ever have it. We were good at making do for fifty years before the earthquake and my impression is that we will have to continue to do so, despite the promises. We are competitive despite the handicaps and this, in the regional territorial balances, can be a reason to continue to postpone”.
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The road and rail infrastructures around Mirandola are often criticized, especially in light of its industrial development since the 1960s. If it is true that isolation allowed the city to resist as an independent state for four hundred years under the seigniory of the Pico family, what specifically would you do to relaunch the city that gave you birth and the area “of the ex-Duchy”?
“We cannot complain if we ourselves have not been able to express political representatives capable of achieving adequate results. It seems that the Mirandola Biomedical District is a value that belongs only to us citizens of the ‘Northern Area’ of the province of Modena. In our opinion, it is a value of Italy and Europe and should be claimed as such. Our Duchy is a beautiful page of history, of which we should be proud. From our Pico della Mirandola, one of the greatest philosophers of the Renaissance, I want to remember this phrase: “Man is the most dignified of living creatures, because he can choose what to become. He is the only one, on earth, who does not have a destiny already marked out; he is the only one who has in his hands the possibility to shape his own life’. This phrase was quoted by Sergio Marchionne (Italian-Canadian but Swiss citizen) in a speech he gave in Mirandola on November 5, 2010. We would like to remind you that the radio station born in Mirandola exactly forty-five years ago is called Radio Pico and continues to be an essential part of the Group of Companies for which I am responsible”.
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What do you think about Switzerland and what is the nature of your current collaboration with the Milan Consulate General of the Confederation? Do you foresee any personal or business opportunities in Switzerland?
“Switzerland is a model of federalism that works and it’s a pity that we don’t hear much about it in our media. With the Consulate of Milan, and in particular with the Swiss Business Hub, we have interesting collaborative relationships precisely for this reason. We give visibility in the biomedical sector to the initiatives that from time to time are presented in Italy, trying to counteract the lack of interest of the national press towards the Swiss Confederation”.
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To what extent is Switzerland present in the Mirandola area, beyond the recent investment of the Ticino-based Medacta in the start-up Aferetica, which specializes in the cleaning of transplant organs?
“Apart from the case you mentioned, I have heard of some non-occasional collaborations in different clinical areas. For example, there have been scientific congresses in Asia in which an important Swiss company and a medium-sized company from the district presented together with great success. For obvious reasons of confidentiality I cannot say more, but I believe that in the future there may be interesting strategic developments. In this regard, moments of meeting are more and more useful, and here we come back to the importance of our ‘network place’ Innovabiomed. Let’s meet in a year to talk about it again and you will see that the district of the small town of Pico and the European network place ‘Innovabiomed’ will have lived up to expectations…”.
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