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Saving Italy

Will the Sun Set on La Dolce Vita?

The combination of Italy’s flagging economy combined with the inactivity of the Berlusconi government in recent years had set alarm bells ringing for Italy’s Confindustria employers’ federation. For employers’ federation boss Emma Marcegaglia, who has been shouting long and hard for genuine reforms to help Italy’s soggy economy pull itself out of the mire, the alarm […]

Panorama Economy – Spotlighting Italian Business

Panorama Economy information in English about Italy's Businesses

How about learning about lots of productive Italians?  There are more industrious Italians than you might think, it’s just that Italy had not done a great job telling the world about its better sides.  Until now, that is. Some in Italy, I’m happy to report, are attempting to bathe Italy’s businesses and their leaders in […]

A Question: What Are You?

Luigi Centenaro

With my marketing and media relations English classes at the business school where I work, after a few lessons, I hit them with a seemingly very simple question, which flummoxes most of those in the room. That question is “What are you?”. It elicits any number of responses, and leads to many puzzled faces when I say, “Yes, true, and…”.

After several attempts, some of those in the classroom cotton on to what I’m looking for – remember these are marketing and media relations masters, but I also ask the students on other master courses the same question – usually around the time they are being prepared for job interviews designed to test their levels of English.

So what is the answer to this innocent sounding question? And what has this got to do with Italy?

Amazon Lands in Italy, but Visited BlogfromItaly.com first

Amazon.it - Amazon in Italy

Wow! Despite Italy’s decidedly dodgy postal service, Amazon has finally set up shop in Italy. Hello Amazon.it! Amazon.com Inc even visited BlogfromItaly.com to read my How to Post things to Italy post, according to my Google Analytics data. Very interesting.

Not sure who is handling deliveries for them, but if it’s the Italian post office, Amazon will need to keep an eye on things, as they will know after having read my post, and the comments. Amazon has done business in Spain, France and Germany for a few years, but seemed to have steered clear of Italy. Until now that is.

Italian News Roundup – September 2010

Beautiful Bologna, Italy

Well, I’m sorry, but I’ve been a little busy with other projects to dedicate time to post writing on Blog from Italy, alas. I’m going to make up for this a little by writing about what is in the news in Italy at the moment, which is rather a lot, actually.

Italians – Masters of Quality and Quantity

Ray Lamothe of Tuscan Enterprises made an interesting comment while I was spending some time in his company down on his hilltop Casamonti farm in Tuscany this summer. Ray said that Italy is good at the mass producing quality items.

Foreign Direct Investment – Italy Not in Top 15

It’s easy to be negative about Italy, and the country is receiving quite a lot of bad press at the moment, what with potentially repressive laws designed to restrict press freedom, and the odd scandal or three. All the furore leads to this question, possibly: Could Italy’s tarnished image be damaging the countries foreign direct investment prospects?

Italy’s Coop Tops CSR Tables in Europe

Finding something positive to say about Italy these days is not that easy, so reading that the Italian Coop supermarket chain came out on top in Europe in terms of corporate social responsibility, was a pleasant surprise.

Building Bridges to Italy with Lots of Good News

BlogfromItaly is kicking off 2010 on an optimistic note. This post is about BridgestoItaly – a networking site set up by enterprising Italian Bianca Dellepiane to provide a little online publicity for the work of Italian scientists in the Biotech, Nanotech, Cleantech and High-tech sectors.