I spent these days the first year as Dean of the SDA Bocconi School of Management. An extraordinary institution, grown from 1971 to today, thanks to the passion and energy of many colleagues, who I have the responsibility and honor to lead for the coming years. 

I would like to thank my Managing Board, all the colleagues from the faculty and staff, as well as the participants in our Masters and programmes, the companies and institutions working with us, the alumni and the donors. I learned once again and more that the "School" is an open community, which is built and evolves every day thanks to the passion, the ability to listen, thanks to the creativity and innovation that research produces, thanks to the entrepreneurship that is outside and that is inside the School.

SDA Bocconi is a School of "Management". A keyword that indicates responsibility, the responsibility to guide women and men, resources and organizations throughout challenges and transitions. Management does not have a membership and a label, but involves companies and financial institutions, public administrations and international institutions, not-for-profit organizations. The task of SDA Bocconi is to promote the advancement of culture and managerial skills, through training and research. The task of SDA Bocconi is to have impact, to help have a more just and sustainable society and organizations.

Several times this year I have been able to remember at every moment of a meeting and of a public event, that the duty and the greatest challenge for a School of Management is to help individuals and organizations to connect, to the point of making them indistinct, value to values. Without "value", which every public or private organization measures with its own metrics, there are no results, no growth, no employment. If we want a fairer society that can promote investment, innovation and prosperity, we need this. The "values" are the social glue, they are the way in which individuals and organizations respond to the forces that challenge to destroy our eco-system: the scarcity of key resources, poverty, pollution, war, the absence of diversity, the bad governance. Without values it becomes progressively more difficult to create value. The World will be sustainable long-term or it will not be.

Is that too much work for a Management School? Not at all, because higher-education is the common denominator for a better society, for thinking freely about new ideas for the future to innovate, it is the common denominator for ensuring change and personal growth. The road continues unabated, in our country and internationally, without borders.