From
electronics to video surveillance tools and up to hi-tech augmented reality and
artificial intelligence solutions. This is Techboard, an excellence from Modena
that today operates all over the world and that has decided to play the match
by teaming up with young talents. Giampaolo Colletti interviews Fabio Malagoli,
Chief Executive of Techboard Group for FARE Insieme
di Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
There are
companies that are able to anticipate the times and work as a team with the
community, with talents, with the whole world. To do this, you must certainly
have vision, but above all listening skills. And this is the winning recipe of
Techboard, a company from Modena, jewel in electronics and created to produce
printed circuits, which today has forty collaborators in Italy, twenty in
Brazil and eight in India. Then there is a cooperation with a Chinese company
that consists of a team of three hundred people. Today Techboard, founded as
early as 1979, has a turnover of 10 million euros. A story made up of many
stories. It all starts with the production of printed circuits. Then the
company moves on to video surveillance, to applications for the optimisation of
industrial production processes, up to the hi-tech and immersive solutions with
Holomask, MilleEmilia and the newborn Techeateasy.
Being at the forefront from the very beginning means being ahead of the times. «It is sufficient to say that the first
electronics company was born in Turin upon initiative of Olivetti in the 1950s,
then in the 1980s-2000s things became industrialised, making companies emerge
from a purely artisan dynamic. In 2001 I personally went to China right after
the new economy bubble, but I woke up early from this dream, which was actually
an illusion. I realised that we could not have succeeded: the production of
circuits forced us to use continuous flow systems. So in 2005 we made an
investment in a Chinese company before others», says Fabio Malagoli, Chief
Executive of Techboard, one of the first companies to land in China.
The way
towards open innovation. But there is an element that
characterises this Emilian company and it is something very contemporary linked
to open innovation. In 2019, before the pandemic emergency, the e-hub was born
at Techboard. «We discontinued the
production of printed circuits with great suffering and came to terms with a
corporate reorganisation. The lines were important because they occupied four
thousand square metres plus a few technical offices. We thus found to have
important spaces available. Having changed our skin, we decided to look at what
was happening in the external market. We said to ourselves: why not give credit
to young talents who want to set up their own business in the electronics
sector? An idea that proved to be successful. So we opened the doors to
promising start-ups created by young people who spoke the same language as us.
From this operation we obtained a great response from the market», remembers
Malagoli. Today the space hosts fifteen start-ups and another 7-8 companies
will be added to the picture in collaboration with the University of Modena and
Reggio Emilia and SNAM. A win-win project, as the Americans would say, because
it redesigns the contours of the company by expanding the perimeter, rewriting
the ambitions, and increasing the specific weight of a much more competitive
market that is necessarily faced with a multiplicity of ideas and skills as a
common factor. «In a couple of
years, having put together all these people who work independently in such
cutting-edge sectors, has proved to be successful for us. These young people
have free access whenever they want, they have the production lines, the
laboratories, the skills of my team at their disposal. On a couple of occasions
we joined the capital structure and brought a small but significant
acceleration. The goal for us is to support the young entrepreneur, not to
unseat him/her. All this implies a change of mentality and to see what was a
competitor until yesterday as a possible partner today», explains Malagoli.
The future declined in a plural form. Today the company talks about VCA, facial
recognition, smart city, autonomous driving and augmented reality. But
basically, in addition to innovative solutions, the company's DNA remains
linked to the curiosity of knowledge and of know-how. «We certainly started with technology, which is central to us. But
what makes the difference goes beyond skills. It is in the way of being, of
working as a team. For some years now, our watchword has been contamination:
the crucial point is to get involved in trying to build something that is more
important. And I realise that in this way things never come by themselves.
Before, the strength of man was to act on the market. Then all this was taken
over by the machines. But now it is time for the individual to be at the centre
of attention again», says Malagoli. For Techboard in the future lie artificial
intelligence, the Internet of Things and 5G, which make things possible. The
technology is there, but soon it will be even more integrated, shared, interconnected.
Cultural barriers must be overcome, more than technological and infrastructural
ones. «Sharing becomes a must to
ensure that the piece of the future of each one of us becomes a larger mosaic
with the contribution of everyone. And I am feeling this new approach in the
new generations, in the 25-30 year olds of today», concludes Malagoli. Once
again the future to come will necessarily be declined in the plural form.
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
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