Simone Massaro , 38, is head of a company that has 75 engineers including 55 Italians and a dozen instead from United States, Canada, Sweden, Germany and Russia . Where is this company? In Sicily, Catania. What to produce? “Products impalpable,” as he calls them the engineer Massaro, ie software . He graduated in Catania, Simone goes to work in the United States where he finds a recognition of his talent, almost unexpected: he collects experiences with Microsoft, Disney, NASA, the Pentagon . But to launch his company decided to return to the foot of the volcano.
Overseas is engaged in development of technologies for monitoring and remote control of industrial plants of various kinds. Among many things, develops software for monitoring and remote control of the amusement parks of Disney and all the rides in them (roller coaster, animatronics, lighting); for control of the launch platform of the shuttle; terminal 5 of ‘ airport Eathrow ; for the assembly lines of the Mercedes; centers for postal mechanization US; platforms for oil extraction.
But because anything can happen in the US or Germany and not in Italy, since the creation of software is linked to human talent and intellectual and not to a specific product or a plant that grows only in a given territory or with a certain type of climate? It’s what you asked Massaro. The answer was the return to Sicily, to open a development center in Catania. Initially he can not “perhaps because – he explains – the Sicilians have fear or dread of the great American names.” But do not give up and with personal investments opens a center for research and development with two American colleagues transferred to Catania in 2011.
Thanks to the talent and the experience gained in the US is able to convince many of the colleagues with whom he worked to move to Catania to follow him in his project. His company now has 75 engineers, produces software for the control of large electrical networks, works with names like EDF (Electricite de France) and Enel Green Power . The company has become a small multinational with offices in various countries and a consortium in Sicily with other companies such as BaxEnergy that deals with energy, others that deal with videogames for Sony and Microsoft as the Rimlights Studios and more.
The market to which it addresses the team Massaro is global : is already present in almost all of Europe, Chile , Guatemala, Brazil , Mexico, Morocco . The main customers are Germany and Canada . While talking on the phone getting ready to go to San Francisco where he has an office that distributes products to major corporations. “If California were a country today would have the highest GDP in the world. It knows who helps to lift GDP this? We Italian engineers, “says Simone Massaro. “ Why there can enhance our minds and not here? In Italy there are people willing to believe that all this is possible, do not invest on young people, their ideas, their potential, are not willing to pay the professionals as they deserve, for their expertise and their ability “he says.
His company is a reality Sicilian with a global vision, “because those who do business needs to look at the world that needs us, of what we produce, our high-tech products.” Massaro plays selections extremely careful and choose only young people with high potential and with much enthusiasm. Look to the past experience, the personal life, the world view of the candidates and offers them a chance for revenge. Assumes the over-qualified and have no place in Italy, university professors who are willing to leave the academic career.
The government of Matteo Renzi has introduced tax relief on intellectual property such as patents and software. “It’s a very important thing – he said – will be encouraged talents to work here, pay taxes to the Italian State and not in a foreign country.” The bet of Sicily must break free from the limits. “We can no longer remain bound to the idea of a Sicily that produces and excels only nell’agroalimentare. The software does not have the limitation of borders, transport, placing the industry in a given territory, are intangible products. ” According Massaro should follow the Irish model, the country where he was in his youth. “In Ireland, 25 years ago there was nothing, now through the tax exemption has managed to attract great talent and export technology products everywhere.”
Eight people of his team were married in 2014 and have created a family. In Catania. The purpose of Massaro is create a think tank , a tank that has and will accept people like him who have made a journey abroad to find suitable challenges and then are back in Italy, a technological hub Italian but at the same time global. “If brains that count are from here, then this is where I want to be, it is here that must remain my investments,” he says. Her children are born in the US but it is in Italy that wants to grow up and go to school , believes in institutions and in the Italian school: “In America the story part by Christopher Columbus, but have classes supertechnological at the same time, from a humanistic point of view, poor education and sterile, “he says.
To the young Sicilian sends a message: “You have to travel, see the world, you have to make the case even if you do not know what you are going to do , learn languages. We must talk with governments, know them, be present in the world. But then go back to Sicily, nurture it with what you have seen, you have learned it, enrich it. ”
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