Storia D'impresa

Si pone in rilievo il ruolo di una rivista di disegno industriale, oggi design, nella storia dell'italiano contemporaneo. Fondata dall'architetto Alberto Rosselli nel 1954, la pubblicazione trimestrale e poi bimestrale, «Stile industria», accompagnerà per nove anni la crescita della società italiana del "boom" economico, dando una forma testuale e linguistica al dibattito intorno all’estetica della produzione in serie, e toccando nel contempo un insieme di fenomeni e processi riguardanti diversi strati della popolazione coinvolti nella produzione e nel consumo dei beni. La nuova realtà produttiva, che ha profondamente modificato la vita della società italiana condizionando a partire dagli anni Cinquanta gli usi e i costumi della quotidianità, ha trovato nella disciplina del design una delle manifestazioni più evidenti. Alla sua fisionomia di materia e tecnica e artistica corrispondeva appieno l’impostazione del periodico guidato da Rosselli. E così, nella scrittura "del" e "sul" design, le parole antiche, "forma" e "formale", "funzione", acquistano una nuova accezione circoscritta al lavoro del designer. All’epoca poco frequenti nella lingua d’uso, i termini che le affiancano, "funzionale" e "funzionalità", dal linguaggio tecnologico passeranno rapidamente in quello del commercio e della pubblicità, per fissarsi stabilmente nel lessico di settori diversi. A questi si aggiungono "efficienza" ed "estetica", l’antico "creativo" con il valore del tutto nuovo di ‘dotato di fantasia e inventiva’ e la neoformazione "creatività".

Fritz L. Redlich (1892–1978), completed his degree in economics in Berlin in 1914 when the historical school still dominated the field in the person of Gustav Schmoller. His PhD research was already dedicated to a business history study: the German tar industry, while his attempt at obtaining a teaching qualification based on a research on the historical and economic significance of advertisement. Redlich himself withdrew his dissertation after the Nazis seized power in 1933 and three years later left Germany for the United States. He taught in several universities and also served in the public administration, all the while writing on the American Steel and banking industries, supported and sponsored by Frank Taussig. A major breakthrough in his career was the call to participate in the work of the Research Center in Entrepreneurial History at Harvard University. There, in continuous confrontation with Schumpeter, Cole and many other researchers in matters of entrepreneurship, Redlich developed an interesting epistemological foundation for the newly-born business history. He distinguished between research on the actor and on the action. Entrepreneurs could be studied as an ideal type, in theory, as a real type, in analytical empirical research, and as simple businessman in case-studies and biographical reconstructions. The action of entrepreneurs could be researched in regard to the goals and meaning of their enterprises, to the economy as a whole and to the community at large. Entrepreneurs could interact with all of the three aforementioned spheres of action, influencing not only the profitability of their ventures but also the development of an economy or the well-being of a community. As such, researching entrepreneurship only from the theoretical point of view would be limitative for Redlich. Business history should also attempt to 'verstehen', becoming part of the social sciences. The paper will analyse the methodological works of Fritz Redlich and his participation to the lively debate on the scientific statute of business history along with A. D. Chandler, but also his researches on aristocratic entrepreneurship, a topic on which he coordinated an international research effort, and his historiographic recounts on the emergence and diffusion of business history in Germany and in the United States.