The challenge for young entrepreneurs is staged in Turin

(Il Sole 24 Ore - Radiocor) - Less than 10% of businesses in the Turin area are led by under-40s, totalling just under 21,000, according to data released by the Turin Chamber of Commerce. This represents a drop compared to the previous year of 416 activities and a reduced presence of young people in key sectors such as manufacturing, tourism and trade. As part of the Torino Capitale della cultura d'impresa 2024 programme, the "Start Hack - L'hackathon per la tua idea di startup" challenge was born out of a desire to bring young people closer to business creation. The day, Tuesday 12 March, was entirely dedicated to promoting business culture among young people, particularly the 'Z generation' and 'millenials', and stimulating entrepreneurship. The event, organised by the Gruppo Giovani Imprenditori dell'Unione Industriali Torino (Young Entrepreneurs Group of the Turin Industrial Union) together with the media company Will Media, was designed for students from universities all over Italy. Thirty-two students were involved in the competitive format, organised for the occasion in the spaces of the Unione Industriali Torino Congress Centre, mainly from Piedmont but also from Bergamo, Florence, Padua and Rome and enrolled in business, architecture, engineering, philosophy and education science faculties. "We started from the observation of some numbers," explained Barbara Graffino, president of Giovani Imprenditori Unione Industriali Torino. "Mimit's report on the state of innovation and innovative SMEs shows how, while in recent years, even with the right policies, there has been a good increase, albeit in very small percentages (of start-ups and innovative SMEs, ed.), in 2023, probably also due to the economic situation, there has been a decrease in the percentage of innovative start-ups. We cannot afford this and we have thought of a way to spread the enterprise culture,' said Graffino, a will that translates into a challenge among young entrepreneurs.

Eight participating teams, each consisting of four people and supervised by a mentor, have been selected to give life to an entrepreneurial development challenge, which involves designing the business model of an innovative start-up operating in a sector to be chosen from among education, tourism and culture, and mobility. In detail, in the field of education the theme is that of orientation to overcome the problem of mismatch with the world of work, on the tourism front the area of intervention concerns the management of overtourism in large cities, and finally, the challenge in the field of mobility concerns sustainable transport in metropolises. The aim of the project, according to Barbara Graffino, is to address 'young people who are still studying andtell them that business is an option. With this project we are trying to give some stimulus'. The hackathon kicks off with a collective briefing, after which each team, assisted by their mentor, mostly young entrepreneurs from the Unione Industriali Torino, will have the task of developing their idea and then presenting it, in the first part of the afternoon, to the jury composed of the chairwoman Barbara Graffino, Andrea Marangione, vice-president of Giovani Imprenditori Confindustria, the Coo of Will&Chora Media, Riccardo Haupt and the president of the Investors Club, Giancarlo Rocchietti. The verdict of the evaluation committee is expected to be announced at the closing event of the day.

The meeting, which is also open to the public, will include among the guests, in addition to President Graffino herself and Andrea Marangione, the startuppers Erika Desanti, co-founder of We Road and Andrea Ferrero, co-founder and CEO Young Platform, with their testimonies. Also in the spotlight will be the contribution of Marco Lavazza, vice-president of the Lavazza Group, and the institutional debate between the president of the Unione Industriali Torino, Giorgio Marsiaj, the city of Turin's councillor for production activities, Gianna Pentenero, and the Politecnico di Torino professor Fulvio Corno, the Rector's delegate for technologies supporting teaching.

Not only the hackathon, the appointment aimed at young entrepreneurs also includes the launch of the digital publishing project "Storie d'impresa". Five video podcasts from Will Media's Ceo Insight series with which Turin's Young Entrepreneurs have collected the voices of as many senior colleagues. "If you want to go after a target audience, you have to use the right tool: today video podcasts are a tool that that generation likes, this is how young people get information," Barbara Graffino goes on to explain, talking about the research and the choice of the most suitable communication tool to involve the younger generations. The first episode, dedicated to new business models and entrusted to Luca Ferrari, CEO of Bending Spoon, one of the leading app developers on the international market, is already online. The protagonists of the following episodes will be Marco Lavazza in an episode dedicated to family entrepreneurship, Jose Rallo, Managing Director of Donnafugata, to address the theme of female entrepreneurship, the owner of Newcleo, Stefano Buono, with a story on the challenge of innovation, and Danila Di Stefano, who, starting from the foundation of her Unobravo, outlines the steps for creating a new company. Different stories that tell different ways of being an entrepreneur. Involving young people, for the president of Giovani Imprenditori Unione Industriali Torino is an 'unavoidable step', transferring entrepreneurial skills is fundamental, not so much so that 'everyone can be an entrepreneur', but rather because acquiring some of the skills that an entrepreneur has, allows 'being better prepared to face challenges', whatever they may be. And it is to the young people in the competition, but not only to them, that Barbara Graffino addresses, advising them to "get involved and be inspired", while inviting them to "not to stop giving support to the new enterprise, in whatever way they can".