Global Insights and Inspiration from Intesa Sanpaolo

Two years ago, the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design opened an outpost in Costa Rica. From the outside, this might appear to be a random office move. But, explains Simona Maschi, co-founder and director of the CIID, Costa Rica is the perfect base from which to work on the biggest design problem of our generation: that of saving the planet. This podcast is an interview with Maschi, explaining the process of interaction design and how it might help in our eco-emergency.

Two years ago, Intesa Sanpaolo launched a €5bn loan fund for businesses and projects supporting the Circular Economy. It has been highly successful, with €1.2bn loaned to 95 such initiatives. In this episode, three people behind sustainability at Intesa Sanpaolo explain the criteria used to decide who gets funding, why investors need educating on sustainability and why innovative thinking is more important than ever before. This podcast was recorded before the latest lending figures became av...

What would a circular city look like? It would run on renewable energy and have buildings that can change their function and the way they work over time. We would have shared transport facilities, no single-use passenger vehicles, and there would be lots of green space and urban farming. Yet cities have evolved to such an overwhelming level of complexity that, in reality, changing their ways seems almost impossible. In this podcast we hear from Milan, a city taking on the challenge of making ...

A new exhibition in Milan brings together for the first time the works of Antonio Canova (1757-1822) and the younger Danish artist Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844), who were both contemporaries and rivals. Canova and Thorvaldsen were both neo-classicist sculptors working in Italy, sometimes creating works inspired by the same subject, and both working for the same people (including Napoléon and the popes, dukes and monarchs of their time). While Thorvaldsen could never master Canova’s sens...

Alessandro Vitale is head of Intesa Sanpaolo’s Hong Kong branch and its Asia-Pacific hub. He stresses the sheer size of the opportunity for Italian, British and other European business in the Greater Bay Area – taking in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau. “The area has the same GDP as that of Spain or Australia. The peculiarity of this region is that GDP is going to double in the next 10 years. That’s a big element of growth in this region of the world.”This podcast explores how Intesa Sanpaolo ...

It takes 23,000 litres of water to make a single T-shirt and a pair of jeans. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Candiani Denim – an Intesa Sanpaolo customer that supplies the popular material for numerous high-end brands – works with high tech materials to make its denim kinder to the environment. Alberto Candiani explains how his company is helping to reduce denim production waste and consumption, while retaining the charm of the well-worn fabric. We also hear from Laura Balmond, of the El...

AI, blockchain, crypto, micro payments, regtech and insurtech are all shifting the working processes of banks. This year, Intesa’s Novathon has evolved from a hackathon for new technologies into a conference focused on innovation and culture transformation, including a talk from the co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak. This podcast features an interview with the tech guru at the Novathon event. We hear his reflections on the future of AI and why companies need to use tech ethically. Maurice Li...

In the automotive sector, there’s an estimated $400bn to $600bn worth of revenue opportunity in the reworking of old parts. Yet the principles of the circular economy are still largely ignored in the everyday business of large automotive manufacturers, which continue to work mostly with traditional linear economy methods. This podcast features Sermec, an Italian car parts company that began using circular economy practices back in 1939, and continues operating the model today, passing huge sa...

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation is on a mission to accelerate the transition to a circular economy. Intesa Sanpaolo has been a global partner of the Foundation since 2015 as its financial services lead. With that commitment extended this year, we hear from Andrew Morlet, the Foundation’s chief executive, in another episode of the Italian Way To A Circular Economy podcast series. He explains the importance of the relationship to efforts to move away from the linear economic model of make-use-di...

The relationship between art and technology is celebrated in a unique exhibition, From Clay to Algorithm. It is a collaboration between Intesa Sanpaolo and the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art near Turin. The third episode of the Intesa Sanpaolo Talks podcast programme explores the exhibition. We hear from Castello di Rivoli’s chief curator and curator of collections, Marcella Beccaria, and Alastair Smart, an influential art critic who discuss its innovative non-linear approach a...