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in the picture: from left Mr. Dom Einhorn and Mr. Jean Vignon, CEO and CFO of UNIQORN

A virtual coffee with Mr. Jean Vignon, CFO of Uniqorn, rural start up incubator and accelerator.

As anticipated in the previous article, today we move virtually to France to have a virtual coffee with a successful entrepreneur. The D.L. Rilancio (DL 19 / 05/2020, n.34) gave space to innovative start-ups, providing in art.38 the allocation of 10 million euros for the allocation of concessions aimed at the acquisition of services provided by incubators, accelerators, innovation hubs, business angels and other public or private entities operating for the development of innovative companies. In addition, further resources of € 200 million for the year 2020 are allocated to the venture capital support fund.

Innovative start-ups can be the real resource of a mature market, let us say, the breath of fresh air that can give new vitality to the environment in which the consolidated companies operate: they need to ride the wave of innovation within the market by using ever new products or services and meeting the needs of consumers and businesses. Furthermore, they constitute the indispensable link to connect the new technological development that works by a speed never recorded in the entire history of humanity, with all the companies that have increased their business through these innovations and allow the entire organization to progress with a view to inclusive and sustainable development. Finally, the biomedical sector and the sector’s advanced research need technologies capable of gathering energy and innovative solutions due to the strict need to give effective answers in a period of serious uncertainty.

Through Mr. Jean Vignon, co founder of UNIQORN, a rural start-up incubator, which operates internationally, we want to include a little more reality that we are experiencing and perhaps trying to seize unexpected opportunities in a scenario that today seems inhospitable.

RALIAN: Mr. Vignon. You are a Chief Financial Officer in a UNIQORN company. What does your company do and which are its objectives?

Mr. Vignon: Good morning, I am indeed co-founder and CFO at UNIQORN.
UNIQORN is the largest rural incubator-accelerator of its kind in the world. Located in southwestern France (Sarlat-la-Canéda), its mission is to give entrepreneurs and their families their lives back while helping them build game-changing technology startups. Startups with post proof of concept (POC) business ideas are provided with a complete ecosystem for success, with direct access to proven funding sources, top-notch legal and accounting representation, access to the world’s most generous business incentives and, most importantly, a dedicated sales and marketing accelerator that will put a startup’s product or service on the fast track to success.

R: Innovation is the very winner into a scenario like SARS COVID 19. Do you think innovation and creative sector will manage our future life more and more and how companies who have invest in innovation gained into this pandemic crise? Can you do us some examples?

V .: I would not say that innovation and creative sectors are the winners of this crisis.
Many entrepreneurs think that because they are innovating then they can become the next unicorn. And it is one of the main reason why “Many are called, but few are chosen”, and why most of start-ups fail to succeed.
With our Group CEO and founder, Dom Einhorn, we are firmly convinced that the most important for a start-up is not to innovate but that its products / services / solutions meet a recognized need.
This being said, there are indeed business areas which have a real chance of emerging; and some of them require some innovation of course.
We can mention as examples: home delivery services, remote work, legaltech, investment migration, epidemiological studies, activities related to prevention, transmission and control of infection, or any post-crisis global challenge.

R: What kind of companies do you think will survive after lockdown and, if you know it how many companies in France are in the severe risk of closing their activities?

V .: It is easier to speak about the companies which will suffer most.
The business travel industry, or tourism, for instance, will be severely disrupted and there is a risk that it might collapse entirely.
With regards to the business failures, they will increase by 25% at the global level. In france, the figure could be 15%.
One thing is for sure though and that is that companies which will survive will need excellent cash flow control.

R .: You invest in start ups. The risk of investing in start ups in this time is increasing. In this moment, what kind of companies may be more attractive and safe for returning of investment and for perspective of increasing gains?

V .: We have launched 4 projects since the COVID 19 crisis started.
Wait a little and you will know more.

R .: Which are 5 characteristics entrepeneurs must have for being reslilience in a post pandemic scenario.

V .: 1. Refuse to adopt a pessimistic and defeated attitude
2. Review its goals
3. Adapt to change
4. Secure the cash flow
5.  Learn humility

R:  You are an incubator and an accelerator of start ups. What do you think about a Special economic zone for permiting to companies to reduce their taxation, reducing burocracy and expand logistic infrastuctures to actract investors and safeguard the internal production boosting the exportations?

V.: It would be a very good thing if all parties involved, including the governements, play the game.

We thank Dr. Vignon for sharing his experience and observations with us. Certainly the pandemic we are experiencing will act a bit like a sickle for many start-ups in Italy and in the world but it can also be an extraordinary launching pad for those companies that will position themselves in those sectors capable of intercepting specific and new needs that require great preparation and dynamism. Without a doubt, training and investment in research and development are the success variables of an economic system so that, from now on, it will be necessary to modify strategic financial planning choices in an innovative – oriented perspective. A great challenge.

We’ll see you at the next virtual coffee back in Italy.

RALIAN Research & Consultancy srl.
©Copyright 2020. ALL rights reserved.

Phase 2, Italy as Genoa.

Phase two must necessarily pass through concrete proposals for administrative simplification, the provision of instruments for accelerating economic development capable of enhancing the extraordinary entrepreneurship that our country has in its economic system. Our “made in Italy” brand is recognized all over the world and needs an extraordinary relaunch. Through special economic zones, customs free zones, simplified logistic zones it is possible to accelerate an economic recovery for a new Italian miracle. Tax exemption accompanied by a massive simplification, together with an essential infrastructure enhancement both in terms of logistics and in terms of stimulating public spending, will push consumption and production upwards for the benefit of our GDP.

The moment of forced stasis makes us reflect on the necessary co-responsibility and participation of citizens in the political-allocative choices of our political representatives. The model used so far has failed miserably by mortifying health, education, culture and innovation, the only pillars that have kept us alive, while collapsing on themselves, in recent months.
There will be no other possibility. Plan with foresight, facilitate businesses, invest in infrastructure, education, health, enhance the social role of culture and creativity, bet on the innovation that derives from it.
Special attention is paid to tourism, the great absence of the programs. The sector generates an important part of GDP and distributes wealth across the entire chain. You can’t just wait. The sector must be supported concretely and restructured also with acceleration logics as happens in other parts of the world (Dubai, for example).

RALIAN has been working tirelessly in recent weeks on a development program that will be fundamental for the next few years. From here we will start to make our voice heard even more on the issues we care about. Our daily commitment in recent months has been, is and will be in this sense. We are an active part in relaunching the Italian post-COVID economy – 19. And we are proud and grateful for this. Silently, stubbornly and incessantly.

The picture of Genoa that proudly shows its reconstructed  Morandi bridge is the warning that inspires our hearts. Italy is there. Italy does not stop like Genoa did not stop. Italy like Genoa does not let itself be overwhelmed by events but reacts, roars, gets up, rebuilds itself, superb, proud and proud.

We want to feel an arrow touch our heart and there in the heart explode. We want to hear that “L’Italia s’è desta ” (, Italy has awakened, as our  National anthem says), once again, in front of the eyes of the world, especially in front of the eyes of that part of the world that told us that we Italians would not have made it.

Simplifying. Reducing taxes. Investing. Relaunching. Taking part. Programming. Starting again.  Flying.

Can the culture represent a driving force of economic development for the territory?

Can the culture represent a driving force of economic development for the territory?
RALIAN Research & Consultancy srl CEO, Valentina Di Milla, gave her answer in the seminar addressed to students of the three-year period of Marketing and Tourism of the “Fermi” Technical-Economic Institute of Gaeta (Italy).
The speech has been focused on the theme of cultural and creative enterprise, a new way of doing economy on a global level, which provides for the humanization of production processes, creativity as the beating heart of the company, cultural promotion at the center of interest entrepreneurial.
Recognized by the European Union as an essential factor for the economic and social growth of the entire European territory, participating in the EU Gross Domestic Product for approximately 3%, cultural enterprises are the new challenge in an innovative economic context.
The cultural enterprise represents a network of human values ​​placed at the center of an economic project to spread territorial, cultural, artistic, technological, creative and, therefore, professional beauty.
It follows that the creative and cultural industry is a natural added value for any other company in the industrial sector.
The video of the interview is available at the minute 2.32 on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrztDvlEHQE

Cultural and creative enterprise

A few decades ago, investing in a cultural and creative enterprise was certainly the most visionary decision that could be taken. It was at the center of an ardent debate that contrasted the political world with the scientific world. The sector of the cultural industry was considered in a negative way: an industry that has neither real inputs nor as many tangible outputs, it is certainly an industry that does not produce. In reality, the fruit of human intellect, of its imagination and of its particular inspiration is really a production in the economic sense. It will be precisely the English political world, through the words of Tony Blair, then British Prime Minister, to recognize the economic value of the creative industry, attributing to it the ability to create wealth and work through the use of intellectual property. In addition to this recognition, another direct consequence of the first was born: the extraordinary creative and innovative scope inherent in the cultural sector enterprises to stimulate a virtuous spiral of growth in the economic and social fields. In Italy, at the end of 2007, the President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano, in his speech at the end of the year, stated that “a strength of our ountry is the culture of creativity, which must make the potential of our businesses and of our work”. It is undeniable that creativity favors the growth of the economy and puts companies in a position of competitive advantage. Hence the exaltation of the economic and social significance of a new way of doing economy which, after more than a decade from these affirmations, manifests itself in all its truth: human value, people, their formation and the development of their knowledge, constitute the real added value of a company.

Our conclusion is based on the observation of the internal and managerial dynamics of a cultural / creative company. In fact, in this industrial context personal skills and technical knowledge are not enough. The conditio sine qua non which is the basis for the success and the innovative capacity of a cultural enterprise is inexorably the environment within which it operates, so as to encourage its creative vision and, at the same time, an economy that seriously wants to invest in it. It is a complex process that bases its very survival on a necessary and sufficient condition, identifiable with the coexistence and perfect collaboration of indispensable and irreplaceable assets as unique, such as ideas, abilities, preparation, expertise and talent , with technological innovation and culture. It is precisely culture that is the productive factor capable of triggering the entire process of cultural and creative production through which we can develop new products.

Furthermore, the analysis of a cultural enterprise must be examined for each type of activity that can potentially be delivered. If we observe it from an artistic production point of view, the creative potential is expressed in all its grandeur through the conception and realization of a quid never realized before, a unique and authentic product, the result of imagination, style and inspiration. The economic repercussions are its immediate consequence and close as in a perfect circle in which it is no longer possible to understand its beginning and its end, precisely because that innovation establishes an uninterrupted and dynamic cycle that finds its economic justification in the more than perfect allocation of unique intangible assets, including artistic inspiration, technological innovations and new economic scenarios, with the combination of human, social, institutional and cultural factors. It follows that creativity is not “only” the inspiration that underlies innovation, but is one of the main and indispensable factors that contribute to its development. In fact creative ideas are indispensable both in the initial phase and throughout its production process. The economic consistency of the project will be born from them, starting from its creation, up to the distribution of the new output (product, service and / or process) that maximizes the utility of the final consumer bringing the greatest benefit through his purchase. This virtuous process will produce long-term effects.

The European Union attaches great importance to the cultural sector and through Article 167 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) sanctions its discipline, defining its principles and the current framework through substantive contents and decision-making procedures.

It is not a coincidence, in fact, that in the same preamble to the Treaty on European Union (TEU) is expressed the precise desire to be inspired by “the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe” through a concrete commitment to respect “its rich cultural and linguistic diversity, and shall ensure that Europe’s cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced. (Article 3 of the TEU). These inspiring principles allow the introduction of an important innovation in the decision-making procedures within the Council. In particular, decisions relating to cultural spheres (mainly with regard to the format and scope of funding programs) do not required to vote unanimously, as in the past, but are considered adopted through the expression of qualified majority voting. The ratio is to be found in the attempt to promote a complete development of the cultures of the Member States, while respecting individual national and regional differences, in order to enhance their common cultural heritage.

The protection of culture is also accepted in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. In particular, article 13 states “the arts and scientific research are free” and article 22 states that “the Union respects cultural, religious and linguistic diversity”.

Therefore it is not risky to conclude that, for the European Union, the cultural sector is one of the privileged instruments capable of implementing the highest objectives of prosperity, solidarity, security and internationalization. The latter in particular cannot be carried out outside a process of recognition and contemporary protection of cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue. Culture, from the point of view of the Community legislator, is to be understood as a true accelerator of creativity and international relations.

The “Creative Europe” framework program dedicates € 1.46 billion to the cultural and creative sector for the period 2014 to 2020. It is structured in the Culture Sub-program and in the MEDIA Sub-Program and in a “cross-sectoral” section that acts through a guarantee fund designed for two different purposes: to facilitate access to credit for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in the sector; to allow a more precise and equitable assessment of risks in financial intermediation.  This helps building  an inclusive and far-sighted entrepreneurial and financial ecosystem, which enhances all the enormous potential of the sector and, at the same time, reassures public and / or private investors of the reliability and economic capacity of the cultural and creative sector.

It should be noted that the amount of budget available to the cultural sector will be defined in this month of December. If on the one hand, rumors speak of an increase in the sum made available to the cultural and creative sector, bringing it to a doubling of that expected in the previous period. However, there are also many concerns about deep cuts in the sector, as feared by Sabine Verheyen, president of the EU CULT Commission.

The arguments put forward so far would remain sterile words if they were not supported, as they are, by numbers and statistics. In particular, according to the most recent Eurostat periodical publication, the cultural and creative sector as a driver of economic growth:

– contributes more than 2% to the European Gross Domestic Product;

– it is an important employment source with more than 8.7 million jobs to its credit, for a value equal to 3.8% of total employment. The confirmation of what has been stated comes from highly innovative companies, which possess an important economic potential and the possibility, through alternative and highly innovative financing channels (crowfunding, smart finance, business angels), to penetrate the market in a disruptive way generating other occupation, as well as stimulating foreign trade.

– is a dynamic and stimulating sector able to attract unique talents and “transilient” minds. A meltin ‘pop of diversity and uniqueness that stimulates, fascinates, attracts, innovates, creates, realizes, reproduces, embellishes, enchants, monetizes, teaches, elevates. A varied constellation of professionalism that ranges from the “creative, artistic and entertainment” arts, to “libraries, archives, museums and other cultural activities”, as well as from the sector of production and programming of audiovisual, radio, cinema, record activities, to sector of specialized design activities.

Welcome to a new era, that one in which doing business is a question of culture.

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