Last December, Laurence Friberg and I travelled to Naples to do a presentation “Social Innovation or how to redesign the way we do Business” to AIESECers from all over Italy and to students from the University of Naples, during their conference called “Youth Driven Sustainable Change”. To summarise, we covered the subjects: Corporate Social Responsibility, Entrepreneurship and the differences between a regular entrepreneur and a social entrepreneur, and Social Innovation, explaining concepts such as System Thinking, Process Design and Design Thinking. It was illustrated by many examples and some best case practices that we use at IE.
Apart from the presentation, I’d also like to share with you Laurence’s adventures in the city. Her amusing commentary went as follows…
”I got very little time to explore the city but could get a glimpse of some part of the streets and try the delicious pizzas! In the place where we went, a Margarita (I am talking about the pizza, not the drink! :)) was only 3.5 Euros, which amazed me. I would move to Naples just to stuff myself with their delicious pizzas! What else? Well, I have to tell you I was quite scared in my taxi sometimes because they drive like crazy!!! Fasten your seatbelt because they go really fast and drive by cars or obstacles reallllllllyyyy closely! More than once, I could see the accident coming but I guess I was a bit overdramatic… However, Sergio, our representative from Italy told me that car insurance policies are much more expensive in this part of the country than anywhere else!”.
Her last anecdote happened in the airport. “I would see all those super well dressed Italian guys (because yes, I have to admit that they have a great sense of fashion and style!) walking around with white bags that they handled very carefully. I investigated and found out that they were coming from a chain who sells fresh mozzarella di bufala campana (cow buffalo). Therefore the careful handling as the mozzarellas came in their “juice”. Anyway, I thought it was far more original than the typical chocolates that you take home“.
Stay posted to read the next adventures and anecdotes of the Europe team!
Sergio and Laurence
About the author
With an Engineering background and experience in consulting, Sergio Negri completed his MBA in 2004, after which he joined Metro News as a Business Development Manager. Since 2008 he has been the Manager for IE in Italy, finding new job opportunities for IE alumni and advising potential candidates. He’s also Adjunct professor at IE, in the field of IT management.