The Future? Valuing Relationships for a New Humanism

SDA was then recovering brilliantly from the heavy economic crisis that had hit Italy in the early 1990s, as the economy was heading towards a process, that of globalization, which would become more and more accentuated in subsequent years. "In 1998-99, SDA Bocconi was given the Equis accreditation for higher education by the EFMD, an event in which I played a role on two fronts", recalls Elio Borgonovi, Dean of SDA Bocconi School of Management in the period 1997-2002, under the Presidency of Claudio Demattè, "since I was also president of ASFOR, the Italian association for management training".
It was an important period, which saw the School establish itself for the first time in the main international rankings and, in fact, anticipated the internationalization of the University. "The newly acquired status gave us the impetus for a more rigorous selection of the faculty and to increase the administrative autonomy of the School. This was necessary", continues Borgonovi,"because autonomy was a mandatory requirement to obtain international accreditation, and it was not easy to explain that our legal system was different, for example, from the British one. We did a great job in this sense with the Rectors of the time, Roberto Ruozi and Carlo Secchi."

During the years of his mandate, Elio Borgonovi saw many high-profile personalities, entrepreneurs, managers, representatives of national and international institutions pass through the classrooms of SDA. One memory in particular he gladly recalls, because it is linked to one of his passions, football: "During my tenure, the FIFA Master - International Master in Management, Law and Humanities of Sport was established, and during an event linked to the course the then FIFA president Joseph Blatter intervened and was very impressed when I told him that I had founded a football team, had been a coach and, above all, that I was born in the same town as the Inzaghi brothers".
SDA is a reality that is constantly updating itself and looking out to the future. What are, for Elio Borgonovi, the roads that must be taken to maintain the position of absolute prestige achieved over the years and, if possible, improve it further? "Obviously, we need to insist on the use of technologies to make the lessons more and more interactive, but in-presence classes must never be lacking because our MBA, for example, has a strong point in the relationships that are made; it is less standardized than the American equivalents.

It will also be essential to strengthen the network of alumni, keeping them united through content delivery, from where they can take part in the debate and create synergies to contribute to what is now called collective intelligence but which I prefer to define as community intelligence, a sort of relational humanism. "Finally", continues Borgonovi,"the research-training connection will have to be made faster and faster, something which is a workhorse in the Bocconi world. It's the kind of research which I call action research, and which immediately gets translated into change".