(by Sergio Alberto Codella, labor lawyer and AIDR Secretary General) Just a few months ago nobody could imagine what would have happened. In the personal, family and professional programs of each of us, the experience of a pandemic that would have upset our daily lives, but above all our safety, was not even included among the worst nightmares and at the most was segregated in the hypothesis of second-order films apocalyptic.
Yet it happened and everything changed. Whoever is reading these lines is probably doing it in a place and in a completely "anomalous" way, even if today it is difficult to understand what an anomaly is.
Many wonder if an "improvement" or a "worsening" for our lives may result from this dramatic event, having been forced to face moments of reflection that our frenetic "yesterday" forced us to face more less fierce.
I am not sure that on a personal consciousness level this moment of stasis can actually be positive or not, but I believe that this phase 2 is bringing out some positive aspects.
I saw CEOs who at the time of the crisis understood that they had to invest in human resources ("human capital") and proved to be "close" to other people and not with more or less rhetorical speeches, but by providing parents with young children financial support.
There have been foundations in the third sector that have been able to completely transform their organization by resorting to smart working and immediately realizing that this could be seen as an opportunity.
Many working parents are struggling daily between their children's work and homework, putting themselves on the front lines as if they were pupils, facing a different life from what they had imagined.
Health workers and doctors are fighting a war without compensation, knowing that - unfortunately - their commitment and sacrifice will be forgotten very soon, but despite this they do not give up sure of doing the right thing.
We are therefore all going through a phase of anguish and fear, but - as often happens in times of difficulty - we are and we must discover new qualities.
And that's what we hope will happen. Most people are organizing to try to come out of the crisis and we are doing it with what we Italians have often saved: spirit of inventiveness, creativity, resilience or to put it in other words with a healthy art of getting by.
The novelty, however, is that we have understood another thing and that is, that this "restart" or, better, this Gordian knot of phase 2 can not be severed except with an ally whom we did not trust too much until yesterday: digitization.
In truth, the most important (significant and serious) entrepreneurial restart processes - from the small bar that must organize home deliveries to the large industry that must manage its spaces and resources through the use of IT supports - have a common the denominator and that is to be supported by digital help, an aid that even the Public Administration cannot avoid which, in order to carry out the tasks to which it is addressed, cannot disregard a deburocratization of the procedures that passes through the computerization and dematerialisation of itself .
This circumstance is in fact affirming itself with such evidence that, in my opinion, the checks on its opportunity appear almost tautological, as it is now an essential aspect of our lives.
We must therefore certainly roll up our sleeves because it will be even harder than before, but we must also change our perspective by relying unreservedly on digitization to make up for lost time and, in severe cases, to survive and renew businesses that would otherwise succumb to the light of what is happening and if this is valid from a national point of view it is even more from an international point of view.
The Covid-19 has therefore not only brought grief and suffering to people, but has also made us understand how certain ways of doing business are to be considered outdated, throwing the glove of the challenge of a profound renewal aimed at conquering foreign markets towards which we felt even weaker.
Although we could not foresee the current emergency, when we founded the AIDR four years ago, Mauro Nicastri, had an intuition that many of the founding members, including Arturo Siniscalchi, Gennaro Petrone, Vittorio Zenardi, Davide D'Amico, Valentina Nucera, Rosangela Cesareo, but also Alessandro Bacci, Andrea Bisciglia and Francesco Pagano, have immediately agreed.
A prosperous future for our country cannot be separated from a determined commitment to digital renewal, especially in companies. Now is the time to take up this challenge and start again. It can be done, it depends only on each of us.