Because corporate training is for research, development and innovation
We publish the presentation by Raffaele Lauro, general secretary of Unimpresa, of the manual "Training 4.0: The future", by Roberto D'Elia, published by Goldengate Edizioni, to be released in September
FROM PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE TO METHOD: AN ASSAY THAT BECOMES A STUDY MANUAL
With great pleasure and with absolute interest, I read, reread and studied in depth all the salient contents of this precious essay by Roberto D'Elia, a young and brilliant professional, as well as a high-level consultant for companies, in the sector of "Training 4.0 ", Aimed at research, development, innovation and company training. Of a training entirely projected into the future, understood as a strategic area for the national economic-productive recovery and as an irreplaceable tool for the digital competition of companies, at national and international level, in particular of SMEs, strangled, to date, with devastating effects, first by the pandemic, not yet eradicated, and then by the Russian-Ukrainian war, with the consequent energy crisis, the sometimes unjustified increase in the cost of all raw materials, the high cost of living, galloping inflation and the looming threat of a recession, the perverse fruit, like a pincer grip, of the “stagflation”. As the chosen title and subtitle, which well summarize the “revolutionary” value of this essay of the turning point, rightly and appropriately recite. I therefore like to confess, how, unlike many other prefaces and reviews written for other works, which are also of considerable scientific and educational level, this one has also enriched me culturally and opened my mind to concepts, ideas, planning and perspectives, hitherto unknown to me. A brilliant and intelligent birth of great strength and incisiveness, as it originates from the living tissue, complex and rich in intense professional experience, transformed by the Author through his well-structured "mindset", I would dare to say Cartesian, in theory , in methodology, in doctrine and in model to be applied, through advanced training, to individual companies, for their growth, for their renewal and for their development. A virtuous circuit of experience, theory and reality, which once again becomes an enriched experience. If “corporate welfare” represents an important driving force for saving and relaunching the most precious fabric of our production system, “Training 4.0” represents its central driving force. Thus, gradually, the essay is transformed, through the invention of a training model, not abstract, into a manual: a valid theoretical-practical path to be used and employed in the "Training 4.0" courses. Some points of the discussion, which is developed in three chapters, deserve to be underlined and to draw the attention of the users of this manual.
2. A REVOLUTION IN “TRAINING 4.0” IN THREE CHAPTERS: THE FUTURE
The first chapter, entitled “Theoretical declination of the concept of model”, offers the reader the theoretical tools on how to arrive at a definition of the term model and on how to use the different types of models, knowing the limits of their applicability. Furthermore, it provides instructions on how to build a model and, once the modeling choice has been made, on how to proceed with the applicability of the chosen model. It is interesting to reflect on the author's concluding problems: “The choice of the purpose of a model implies deciding which types of questions it is able to answer. The questions potentially relevant to a model derive, undoubtedly, from its content, that is, from the knowledge clearly encoded in the model and from the mechanisms of access and inference, which allow to extract such knowledge and decline their possible conclusions. In the literature we do not find, to date, an exhaustive analysis of the types of questions (or classes of problems) that can be faced with a given type of model. Some authors distinguish between three types of problems: descriptive, predictive and explanatory, without, however, providing a relevant definition ".
The second chapter, entitled "The REP.A.RE.T. model", introduces the reader to the central theme of the manual, that is how the Author, starting from the evolution of technology in close correlation with science, has created a new model, as a technical-scientific tool to support technological action, defined with the acronym: REP.A.RE.T (REP = Representation; A = Analyzes; Re = Relation; T = Transmit), an acronym that identifies the structure of the model and the five phases that distinguish it, the five salient points that characterize the new model. Of great interest are the considerations on the debate around the supremacy of science over technology or on the presumed autonomy of technological thinking over scientific thought: "It goes without saying, moreover, that for centuries, and especially in our time, pure scientists and hyperspecialized technologists have been working together to research and produce artifacts and systems useful to humanity, ignoring the debate about the supremacy of science over technology or the existence or not of a technological thought autonomous from the scientific one. Too many times, especially when reading the opinions of authoritative experts, this message seems to be conveyed: since technology deals with the production of artifacts and systems, its study is resolved in the analysis of these artifacts and systems and, at the most elevated, in learning the "how" to build them. But it is science that determines the principles that underpin the possibility of being realized ”.
In the third, concluding chapter, entitled: “The REP.A.RE.T. in support of research, development and business training ", the Author initiates the reader to study two basic documents, to be explored also for the connections with the PNRR, our national research and resilience plan: the Manual by Frascati (2015) and the Oslo Manual (2018). The first dictates the rules for basic research, applied research and experimental development; the second, the rules for measuring innovation. From the above, the reader acquires the knowledge on how the REP.A.RE.T. profoundly innovates corporate training processes, becoming, the latter, an extraordinary tool for research and development (R&D), as well as for innovation within any company. The conclusions of the Author remain, as engraved in the memory of those who read carefully: "In the light of both the complex of themes, object of study in this work, and of the latest topics, object of further study in this last paragraph, it is clear the function and efficiency that the REP.A.RE.T model can have for each type of company. In fact, it represents a particularly useful tool for dictating the guidelines to be followed to implement new business innovation processes (or, simply, to improve an existing one), also by setting up adequate and suitable activities. research and development, identifying the skills and abilities that the figures involved in supporting the activity must possess or which, in any case, need to perfect and / or acquire, to ensure that the company can achieve the result prefixed. The model can also be particularly suitable in order to carry out technical assessments of the scientific foundations and parameters, at the basis of both the innovation and research and development activities already implemented by a company, in order to qualify , in this sense, the activity carried out; above all, arguing what is reported in this text, the thin border that separates initiatives with these characteristics from others that cannot be classified as such appears quite evident, often generating interpretations that tend to fall more into the sphere of subjectivity rather than objectivity. REP.A.RE.T. therefore, it intends to act as a point of reference in the areas just described, which can be replicated for any type of company or activity. Ultimately, it can also be used to monitor the progress of specific activities implemented by a company, evaluating the trajectory followed and the distance from the predetermined ones ". Finally, I call the reader's attention to the substantial and clear bibliographic, which can serve as a driver for those who aspire to deepen the topics covered in this manual.
3. THE SUPREMATY OF TECHNOLOGY AND THE RETURN TO ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
I apologize, to the reader and to the author, if the reading of this stimulating manual, dealing, even if in passing, on the relationship between science and technology, has brought me back to the (distant!) Years of my teaching in the History of Philosophy at the Scientific High School of Sorrento and to debates with my students on many topics of philosophy of science. Among which, in fact, a memorable comparison of ideas on the relationship between science and technology, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Young people, less traditionalists, attributed, more than to Descartes or Leibniz, rather to Galileo, Kepler, Newton and Lavoisier, the merit of having given dignity and autonomy to science and of having contributed to creating a new scientific concept, a new research address and, at the same time, new technological solutions. They, the true pioneers of modern science! Therefore, scientific activity and technology had led to the creation of innovative and revolutionary tools and machines, both in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, improving the living conditions and health of the populations, as well as opening new horizons of economic and social development. . Science was now judged as a specific human activity, but completely indistinguishable from technology: the former promoted the latter, while the latter nourished and fertilized the former. The former also discovered knowledge, the latter put it to good use by producing machines. Just think of the role of the telescope, the microscope or metallurgy. There was full cooperation between the scientist and the engineer, completely reciprocal. Although there was no shortage of innovative artifacts, they did not have any scientific principles or knowledge at the root. The spread of scientific and technological culture, with continuous progress in the fields of chemistry, biology and, finally, genetics, had resulted from all this, also at the initiative of private institutions. By updating this problem, can we confirm today that this indissoluble intertwining between science and technology continues to exist? Or have problems arisen in the meantime about the prevalence of one over the other or vice versa? What is the state of the matter? Or did neuroscience, for example, upset that relationship, posing new and pressing existential and philosophical questions about the structure and functioning of the human mind? Technology, therefore, until yesterday was the product of lesser knowledge, an applicative fallout, albeit highly sophisticated, of superior scientific knowledge: nuclear physics upstream of atomic technologies; the physics of electromagnetic waves upstream of the new telecommunication systems: from radar to radio and television. First of all, scientific research, followed by innovative technological applications! The answer to the question, however, is negative, as the relationship has been subverted in favor of technology! An answer that I had (another memory!) During an editorial committee of the magazine “Poste e Telecomunicazioni”, published by the “Ugo Bordoni” Foundation of Telecom, of which I was the director in charge in the 1980s. One of the collaborating scientists informed us that some new technologies, such as cognitive machines, would definitively subvert the relationship between science and technology. The computer, he claimed, would usher in a kind of technological "new deal". Since then, the new cognitive machines have also overcome the slavery of the desk and follow us everywhere, interacting with each other with calculations and exchanges of information: mobile phones, PDAs, eBooks, notebooks, satellite navigators, iPhones, iPads and so on. We are now in the realm of "cloud computing" and "grid computing"! We will soon have robots at our disposal, as artificial beings, capable of learning automatically and acting autonomously. And tomorrow these robots may even be able to reproduce. Artificial life could be created in the laboratory. We should be living in parallel digital universes. Indeed, this relentless technological progress, unhooked from science, will necessarily bring us back to the origins of our civilization: to the ancient philosophy of eternal questions and to the sacred. And man will no longer be able to renounce the ethical and moral sphere if he does not want to self-destruct and destroy human civilization itself.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/perche-la-formazione-aziendale-e-per-ricerca-sviluppo-e-innovazione/ on Fri, 29 Jul 2022 12:47:19 +0000.