ADRIANO OLIVETTI, A TRULY REMARKABLE MAN
Engineer Adriano Olivetti was undoubtedly the greatest industrialist, entrepreneur, intellectual and publisher that ever lived. He acquired world fame not only for developing and manufacturing one of the most advanced electric calculators of the time, the “Divisumma” (1948), and the most versatile typewriter, the “Olivetti Lettera 22” (1950), but also for producing Italy’s first electronic computer, the Elea 9003.
Adriano’s father, Camillo, also a bright engineer, in 1908 had founded the first typewriter factory in Italy; it had 20 employees. Adriano Olivetti learned from his father not only business management, but the necessity of being genuinely interested in his workers’ welfare. For Olivetti it came natural and spontaneous to treat his employees with fairness and equity; he enjoyed discussing with them their problems and was proud of finding solutions together. The factory had truly the atmosphere of a family.
Adriano was born in 1901 in Ivrea, a small town of 9,500 people a few miles north of Turin. After completing his studies in industrial chemistry in 1924, he visited the USA and toured several industrial plants.
Impressed by what he observed in the new world he returned to his factory in Ivrea and totally modernized it, making assembly lines much more efficient and productive. In 1932 he developed and produced the first portable typewriter. In the same year Adriano took over from his father Camillo and modernized the whole industry technically but he never changed his father’s methods. This was mostly the reason for his success.
In 1959 Olivetti purchased in the USA the typewriter company Underwood with its 11,000 employees and five years later sold his computer division to General Electric. The Olivetti Company continued to develop and manufacture the most advanced PC (personal computer). In 1997 the PC division was sold to England while the factory kept manufacturing new types of computers for AT&T.
Under Adriano’s guidance, the Olivetti Company worked to achieve technological excellence, innovation and international leadership and at the same time strengthened its focus on industrial design and improved living standards for its employees.
His idea of success was not only to achieve commercial accomplishment, but to help poor people becoming productive and content with their lives. In his heart Adriano knew that on the hills surrounding the factory there were thousands of poor people. Mostly he was tormented by the fact that the progress of his factory had caused small enterprises around the area, especially mama’s and papa’s stores, to lose business and be forced to close out. Furthermore, he was distressed that lots of people were migrating to other countries and moving away.
From the very beginning he directed all his attention to people living in the smallest villages of Piedmont and as a result of his efforts, over 70 communities that might have been ghost towns became prosperous and thriving.
At the end of World War II the Olivetti factory of Ivrea had 8,000 workers. All its employees had good reasons to be happy with their work: they enjoyed all kind of benefits, pension, welfare, medical assistance, while their wages were the highest in Italy.
Inside the factory there were canteens and stores where employees could buy everything at rather reasonable prices, from groceries to clothing, appliances, books, etc. Adriano Olivetti did not stop here: he built houses for his employees and provided transportation to and from the working area; he also built schools, libraries and gyms for their children.
In addition to all the above Olivetti created a unique organization called the Comunita’ (Community) in which a group of experts were constantly available to assist individuals in a predicament or in financial difficulty.
The various Comunita’ everywhere in North Italy were solving all the workers’ problems and people were no longer attracted by the promises of Communism. Other regions soon realized what a wonderful organization that was and the principles of Comunita’ spread all over the country.
Thanks to Olivetti’s Comunita’, in the following year’s national elections the Italian Communist party lost a very high number of votes. Statistics proved that because of Olivetti’s organization and its influence on the working class, Italy was spared from the tentacles of Communism.
Adriano Olivetti died in 1960 at age 59 leaving a tremendous vacuum among his employees that always thought of him as a loving father. He left a business enterprise with operation on all the major international markets and 36,000 employees, of whom more than half overseas.
Tony Ghezzo
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