IMA recently turned fifty. We celebrated this landmark anniversary firstly with our customers at the Interpack trade show, then in Bologna with IMA employees, with institutions and with friends.

This important event has made me reflect on the meaning of “being an industry” in the information age, at a time in which everyone, in our context at least, has acquired the right to be informed, take part and express judgements.

I have also wondered if, “as a company”, we really express the best of our ability to grasp all the changes happening in our society, with a precise perception of our values and our needs.

Some answers come from the day-to-day contact with the many businesses using our machines around the world, in a global market made up of billions of people. This helps to understand how sensitivities and rules are changing, but this is not enough; we need to go further.

In the information age, even more than in the past, intangible values are becoming a bigger and bigger part of material values. Thinking that business, even in a specialist niche such as ours, can continue to stay on top form with technological innovation alone without good system innovation seems to me to be flawed.

Our renewed website is the first tool for broadening our horizons, for gathering contributions from those wishing to improve our work, our products, and our relationships, in a system logic that takes into consideration aspects often neglected by industry, and that today, in the information and knowledge age, may turn out to be key when it comes to facing new challenges.

by
Alberto Vacchi
IMA Chairman