Tuesday, 21 April 2015

Mario Moretti Polegato (Geox) at Placement Day

Versione stampabile

Mario Moretti Polegato, founder and general manager of the well-known shoe-producer Geox attended the Placement Day organised by the University of Trento.

“You all are a trademark, a brand. You must find the way to unleash it, with perseverance, logic and passion. Live experiences abroad and bring the lessons you learned, make friends, don’t be stopped by the fear to lose your job”. Polegato called students upon facing their future with energy and cultivating their intuitions.  

He invited the 700 students of the Department of Economics and Management who attended the meeting to love Italy, its unicity and to be ambassadors, with their work, of the creativity which forms the basis of the Made in Italy.

He told his personal experience as an entrepreneur, recalling the origin and development of the idea of the trademark which has gradually conquered the national and international markets. 

Polegato said “The inventor is more capable to perceive the presence of a widespread problem and have the intuition of how to solve it. This is what a true idea is. And an idea is worth more than a factory”. The secret of a successful innovation is the capacity to turn an intuition into a patent and to carry out the necessary experiments. “The innovative character of a product is not enough to be successful”, he added, “You need to innovate your company’s organisation, which needs to be based on precision and accuracy: two qualities which the Italian companies often lack”.

The story of Geox’ foundation and success was the starting point for Polegato’s suggestions to the students, on how to cultivate their business ideas. “Perseverance is the key to success. It is fundamental to seize the challenge and enlarge your activity”. To start with, you need to understand the dimensions and the features of an increasingly globalised and complex market”. He also spoke of the competitiveness of Italy. “Italy is rich in extraordinary resources and needs the initiative of the young to take exploit these resources. We need to support a merit-based system and give to young people the opportunity to make a career, unleashing their energy and skills. The fact that our young people decide to make an experience abroad is not necessarily negative. In fact, they need to leave but not flee. They should aim at trying their best to find their path and enrich their cultural background, so that they can then capitalise it, perhaps coming back to Italy”. 

During his speech Polegato also underlined the need to further strengthen the bounds between companies and universities. “I would love to see more and more professors in the companies, and more and more entrepreneurs in the universities. That would be fruitful for everyone”. 

More information is available in the attached Press release.