The Bicycle and That Photo in the Newspaper

Franco Amigoni does not dwell on the years, from 1991 to 1996, in which he was the director. Because, after all, it is as if he had always been leading SDA, being one of the very few who have been part of the School's lifesince the very beginning, in the years just after its founding by Claudio Demattè in 1971. "The originality of the SDA, that of the early years I mean, does not lie in the contents. We imported those from Harvard," explains Amigoni, who takes a step back. "Managerial culture is not European, it is American. It was the big American companies that, faced with complex tensions, have found solutions, which someone then codified and began to spread. And which are taught in business schools".

However, in Europe, even after World War II, they did not exist. And so, companies promoted their birth, support them. Also in Italy. "Small institutions were thus formed, linked to large companies, where professionals worked who consider themselves bearers of the managerial culture in Italy and who spread it, but only in restricted areas, the so-called elites. And that when SDA came along", continues Amigoni," they looked at it, and they looked at us, with suspicion". Because SDA was different and did something that no one, until now, had done, exploring unknown territories: "We brought managerial culture to new areas, to small and medium-sized enterprises, public administration, healthcare, and the Italian branches of multinationals", continues Amigoni, "and this is the first truly original aspect of the School". But that is not all. Another fundamental issue concerns the teaching staff, which in the other schools came from consultancy, as there was no real market for management teachers in Italy.

"SDA had the brilliant idea of relying on the university world, taking young graduates who were looking for a career, hiring them at Bocconi University, giving them the opportunity to teach also at SDA", continues Amigoni, who was part of that original group of young people. "A dozen in all, we created the first Master and led SDA for a long time, enjoying great autonomy and basing our action on some key words: flexibility, autonomy, market, generation of ideas from the base. We designed courses all the time, and it was us teachers who proposed them, which differentiated us from other schools". Simple ideas that generated complex products, that was the secret. Products that were truly innovative at the time, "like the multi-seminar project, that is, aggregated seminars to be sold together", Franco Amigoni resumes, "or what was perhaps the first major international product, COPAS, a course done in collaboration with companies that saw the best business strategy teachers of those years were involved, such as Igor Ansoff and Richard Normann. And that allowed the SDA Bocconi, the only Italian school, to enter the institutions that brought together the European business schools."

Among the many memories linked to the birth, growth and definitive affirmation of SDA among the best international business schools, one in particular is dear to Amigoni, mixing professional aspects and human relationships: "There were the great meetings we held on the occasion of Christmas greetings, one of the few occasions when we could get together in full force. The central element of these meetings was the gift that the School gave to everyone. Important art and design objects. But the most expensive is when they gave us a beautiful Rossignoli bicycle, which I still have, and the photo that we all saw, riding our two-wheelers, which even appeared in the Gazzetta dello Sport."