A universal grammar of acting in the world
by Franco Amicucci
When it comes to work in Italia, the dominant verb is 'find'. To find a place, to find a company, to find someone to hire. It is such a deep-rooted cultural reflex that it runs through every stage of life: from school, where alternance implicitly directs students to imagine themselves as employees, to pathways for the unemployed, built almost exclusively to accompany them towards employment. Even when we recount the flight of young talent abroad, the narrative remains the same: they leave to find work.
Yet a key piece is missing from this narrative. It does not speak of entrepreneurship as a concrete, accessible, coachable option. It does not educate to generate work, only to seek it. It does not cultivate the idea that talent can become enterprise, that a skill can be transformed into shared value, into employment for oneself and others, into impact for the community.
The paradox is jarring: we are a country that thrives on small businesses, craftsmanship, manufacturing districts, more than four million active companies. Yet the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor has been certifying for years that Italia is below the European average for entrepreneurial intention in young people, not for lack of talent, but for lack of representation. If you don't see it as a normal path, you don't choose it. The education system, instead of correcting this blind spot, continues to produce aspiring employees, not aspiring job builders.
Behind the word entrepreneur, however, lies a plurality of paths that simplification flattens. Some become entrepreneurs by vocation, some by family inheritance - research shows that the best successors spend at least five years outside the company before re-entering it - some by necessity, the most common path in crises and the least well-equipped, some by ambition to scale a market, some by adaptive response to the territory. Five paths, five distinct training needs. A system that does not recognise any of them.
However, there is a deeper misunderstanding to be overcome: entrepreneurial skills are not only needed by those who will open a company. They are needed to become autonomous citizens, whatever one's role may be. Everyone, in adult life, is called upon to manage limited resources, to make decisions under conditions of uncertainty, to enhance one's skills, to build relationships of trust. Entrepreneurial thinking is a citizenship competence. In this sense, educating for entrepreneurship means equipping everyone with a universal grammar to act in the world with awareness.
