Subject areaProcess and organisation
Adriano Olivetti (Ivrea, 1901 - 1960) was an Italian entrepreneur, the son of Camillo Olivetti, who in 1908 had founded in Ivrea Italy's first typewriter factory.
Adriano joined the company in the 1920s, became its president in 1938 and turned it into a business of international standing.
His name remains tied to two lines of work:
- technological innovation: under his leadership Olivetti moved from typewriters and mechanical calculators, the technologies of intelligence of his time, to electronics, with the Elea 9003 computer presented in 1959;
- the company as a community: social services for employees, carefully designed architecture and products, culture inside the factory. For Olivetti profit was also to be reinvested for the benefit of the local area, and in 1948 he founded the Movimento Comunità (Community Movement).
He died on 27 February 1960, shortly after the company entered electronics. His best-known legacy came after him: the electronics division he had wanted produced the Programma 101, the Perottina designed by the team of the engineer Pier Giorgio Perotto, unveiled in 1965 and regarded as the first personal computer in history. In 2018 UNESCO inscribed "Ivrea, industrial city of the 20th century" on the World Heritage List.
Source: Wikidata Q2755047 e Wikipedia, voce Adriano Olivetti, consultate il 19/10/2026, per date e tappe della biografia; Wikipedia, voce Olivetti Programma 101, consultata il 21/10/2026; UNESCO, Ivrea città industriale del XX secolo, iscrizione del 2018.
An example
The case below is built for this entry, because the name does not yet appear in the articles. A manufacturing company that invests in artificial intelligence and, at the same time, in training the people who will use it follows Olivetti's lesson: technology pays off when the workforce understands the reason for change.
Enrico Giubertoni. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0: you may quote, translate and adapt this entry with the author’s name and a link, stating any changes. For commercial use, write to info@enricogiubertoni.com
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