Change is the Real Challenge

By Fabio Gallo, FEDERTEC Board of Directors

For the past year, the entire world has been forced to put the fight against a contagious and unpredictable disease at the top of its priority list. This situation has undeniably heavily impacted on all economic sectors, including those in which FEDERTEC member companies operate. As is often the case, difficulties have made us discern more clearly the priorities from the marginal aspects in our private and professional lives. Equal clarity on priorities is now desirable in the choices to be made at all levels of economic, social, political and, not least, associative life. The situation of the last year represents a substantial point of discontinuity, characterized, on a global level, by a “before” and an “after”. It has, in fact, accelerated the profound need for change that must arise from an epochal change of perspective. For example, the pandemic has forced all of us all to discover the merits and demerits of digitization: a phenomenon already pervasive in other areas of our daily lives, but until now generally underestimated in terms of its impact on the lives of companies and associations. One of the areas that associations such as FEDERTEC institutionally address is the trade fair. In my opinion, in this case, the “after” will change the paradigm of the fair: the “physical” presence of the product, or the service related to the product, will be increasingly mediated by its virtualization. As a matter of fact, I don’t think we’ll be going back to organizing trade shows and conventions in the way we were used to: almost all companies have discovered that it’s possible, and often even more effective and less expensive, to use virtualization to organize targeted events with greater impact to reach specific customer targets. In an attempt to anticipate this rapidly evolving scenario, FEDERTEC has already partly modified both the way it operates and the services for its members. We are not afraid of change, which is inevitable: rather, we leverage the traditional network of skills developed by our companies by inserting digitalization as an “accelerator” in all processes. To close this reflection I believe that the following quote. attributed to Charles Darwin, could be really inspiring: “It is not the strongest or the most intelligent species that survives, but the one that can best adapt to change.”