Quality, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Our Pride, Our Responsibility

THE CHALLENGE AND COMMITMENT TO TRAIN THE GENERATION BORN AFTER 2000. AN EDITORIAL BY GIANMARIO VERONA TO OPEN THE JULYAUGUST ISSUE OF THE BOCCONI MONTHLY

Both women, both Bocconi alumne and successful CEOs, and now both awarded the Legion of Honor. After Francesca Bellettini, at the head of YS, Cristina Scocchia, CEO of Kiko, recently received the prestigious French award. If you ask them to tell the story of their success, the answer for both begins with this: it all began at Bocconi. Because if Bocconi is particularly proud of its alumni, the truth is that this feeling runs equally strong in the opposite direction. And sometimes it is a feeling that starts even before coming to Bocconi.

In fact, I was struck last 28 June, at the first test session for those who enrolled at Bocconi for September 2020, when speaking with one of the approximately 4 thousand students who had just taken the test. This boy, not yet eighteen, confessed to me that he had chosen Bocconi in his third year of high school because, "today choosing Bocconi and Milan means choosing to place yourself where things happen, where you can build your future".

Speaking with him, I once again felt the full weight of the responsibility that as a generation and an institution we bear to respond to the needs, and the dreams, of young people born after 2000. Fortunately, however, we are not unprepared. The answer we have chosen to give is summarized in three words: quality, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Quality in everything we do - education, research and services. Every day we work to improve ourselves. Our position in various international rankings as well as our ability to attract research funding clearly show that our efforts have been rewarded.
Innovation, above all in the content of our programs, which in the last three years we have revolutionized in order to best respond to a fast-paced world. We strive to stay ahead in this race, not chase from behind. Innovation also infuses our teaching methods and the way we face every challenge.

Entrepreneurship, understood as a spirit that drives our actions, but also and above all as support and development for the ideas of our students and alumni. At summer's end we will unveil new projects destined to become the engines of a new phase of entrepreneurship and a source of pride for the whole Bocconi community yet again.
 
At this point, I have only one last question: who will be the third alumna to receive the Legion of Honor?

by Gianmario Verona, Rector