Silvia Candiani, a Leader of the Never Ending Digital Transformation

Silvia Candiani, Country General Manager Microsoft Italia, is a Bocconi alumna in business administration, class 1993, and, as Rector Gianmario Verona says in the ninth instalment of the Executive Chats video series, "part of one of the MNEs that has been leading the digital transformation".

"A growing part of the global GDP is now part of the tech industry", Ms Candiani says, "as every industry has a tech component". For her, this calls for more responsibility in terms of ethics, privacy and inclusion, "which are among our priorities".

Historically, Ms Candiani says, Italy has invested in ICT less than the European average, but now something is changing. Europe is an important actor in ICT, but the issue, now, is choosing what kind of innovation to foster in order to sit at the same table with the US and China.

Microsoft didn't fall victim of any disruption because "it has been able to rejuvenate itself and find a new momentum, starting five years ago with the new CEO, Satya Nadella, who adopted a new strategy, focused on being a cloud platform, and promoted a new culture, thus turning around a company with more than 100,000 employees in less than two years".

As a female leader in a tech company, Ms Candiani advises young women to invest in training; pick a company that appreciates talent and merit, and to believe in themselves. "I visualized and understood who I wanted to be in my life during the years at Bocconi", she concludes.