TEHA: Cernobbio Forum through 50 years

The great issues of the world of today and tomorrow have been discussed for 50 years at the Cernobbio Forum.

The idea of the Forum was conceived on a train between Verona and Milan, one foggy evening of November 1974, during a conversation between Alfredo Ambrosetti and Umberto Colombo. 

When Alfredo Ambrosetti (founder of The European House - Ambrosetti), assisted by some friends, including Umberto Colombo (scientist), Francesco Alberoni (sociologist), and Beniamino Andreatta (economist) organized in 1975 the first meeting in Villa d'Este on the state of the economy and the society's major trends, Italy was going through uncertain times. The terrorism threat of the Brigate Rosse, political instability, an economy that was in bad conditions: the Forum was born in such troubled times, and in 2024 it celebrates 50 years of history.

The first edition of the Cernobbio Forum took place in July 1975, in a context of strong political crisis and national elections: only 14 people participated. It was a very courageous act to launch the Forum in this context. In the second year, 37 applications were received; in 1977, 75; in 1979, 86; in 1980, 102; in 1984, 124; in 1988, 161; in 1990, 195 people requested to attend, and a waiting list was introduced. Today, the number of participants following the three-day event at Villa d'Este is fixed at 250, due to the limited space. 

From the beginning, the Forum's programme has always been structured in three macro-areas. 

1. Friday: major global issues, with a focus on economics, geopolitics and science/technology
2. Saturday: Europe and the European Union
3. Sunday: Italy

This structure was consolidated in the 1980s. 

The Forum's participants must respect the "Chatham House Rule". Everyone - may freely use the information received during the sessions, but must make no mention of the source (be it a speaker or a participant). 

The absence of the media has always facilitated a frank and honest exchange of views between participants. Over 100 national and international newspapers cover the event - including BCC, CNN, CNBC Europe/US, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal, RAI, Corriere della Sera, Sole 24 Ore, Repubblica, Mediaset, etc. - but they never step inside of the conference room, with the exception of selected directors and editors, who must follow the Chatham House Rule as well.

1983, 9th Cernobbio Forum

Marisa Bellisario, the first woman to attend the event, gave an enlightened talk on the future of telecommunications in 1983; at that time she was CEO of ITALTEL. Manager and leader of important electronic groups, advocate of meritocracy, at the time she was among the very few women who participated in the Forum. She and Enrica Pinetti, General Director of Media Trade, were the only two women participants until 1985.

2008, 34th Cernobbio Forum

The discussions around the European topic gave way to a collaboration between the former "Studio Ambrosetti" and Piero Angela, a renowned and beloved Italian scientific communicator and journalist, with whom we created the tv shows "Quark Economy" (1988) and "Quark Europe" (1992), to explain the meaning and consequences of the arrival of the common currency, the euro. Years later, in 2008, Piero Angela also participated in the Forum as moderator of the session dedicated to energy and climate change.

1992, 18th Cernobbio Forum

The end of the Soviet Union in 1991 was hailed as the end of the cold war and, for the West, as a double victory: democracy over communism. In the 1992 edition of the Cernobbio Forum, the issue of "Dis-Union of the Soviet Union" was at the centre of the debate and was discussed and commented by Renato Ruggiero (Head of International relations of the FIAT group), Hans Detrich Genscher (the first Minister of Foreign Affairs of the unified Germany), Anatoly Sobchak (Mayor of Petersburg and Putin’s university professor), Leonid Grigorev (Vice-Minister of Economy and Finance, Russia), Vladimir Shumekko (Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Government).

1993, 20th Cernobbio Forum

"Italy is the country I love. Here I have my roots, my hopes, my future. Here I learned, from my father and from life, my trade as an entrepreneur. Here I learned about the passion for freedom", said Silvio Berlusconi on the day he went into politics (January 26, 1994). Just a few months before the public announcement of the establishment of Forza Italia, Berlusconi's political party, he was at the Forum in Cernobbio as a participant. Photographies show him listening carefully to the debates and conversing with other attendees. He had been a frequent visitor to the Forum since the 1980s, first as President of Fininvest and then -in 2004 and 2005- as Italy's Prime Minister.

1996, 22th Cernobbio Forum

Bill Gates, then CEO of Microsoft, attended two editions of the Forum in Cernobbio, in 1995 and 1996. On his first participation, he showed a picture of a smartphone to the audience. 

In an interview published in January 2024 on the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Valerio De Molli, Managing Partner & CEO of TEHA Group, recalls an anecdote about Gates: he had arrived to the villa at 2 am from Prague, and instead of sitting down to eat after a long journey he asked to work on his presentation, and kept all his staff and ours rehearsing until 4 in the morning, drinking an ice-cold Coke.

1997, 23th Cernobbio Forum

Michail Gorbačëv attended the Forum in 1997 as Chairman of the International Non-Governmental Foundation for Social and Economic and Political Studies. Penultimate Secretary General of the USSR's Communist Party from 1985 to 1991, he was a protagonist of both the reform processes of the perestroika and the events that followed and led to the dissolution of the USSR and the reunification of Germany. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.

Gorbačëv announced his resignation as President of the USSR in a television message on the evening of December 25, 1991. Three months earlier, in Chernomysk, the Soviet crisis had been commented on by Ralf Dahrendorf, an Anglo-German scholar and politician, Georgy Arbatov, a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and Shimon Peres, leader of the Israeli Labor Party.

1999, 25th Cernobbio Forum

Since 1999, the Cernobbio Forum has also been attended by the group of  the "Leaders of the Future" (Leader del Futuro), who take part in parallel sessions, outside the main room: this is evidence of the Forum's orientation towards openness and renewal. The Leader of the Future programme was created as a service aimed at the children of entrepreneurs, aged no more than 35, with the aim of preparing them for their future role in the company and to better address changes taking place in society and in the national and global economy.

The group that organises the Cernobbio Forum is variegated: it includes a small core of people who develop - throughout the year - the programme and select the speakers; other colleagues give their support at different times and for different tasks, dealing with all aspects related to such a complex event: logistics, rooming, direction, communication, managing documentation, writing papers and reports, etc. In the weeks leading up to the Forum, the working group grows in size and may include up to 60 people. It is only thanks to their competence, professionalism, passion and dedication that the Forum has become the prestigious event that we know today.

1994, 20th Cernobbio Forum

In 1994, Antonio Di Pietro crossed the gates of Villa D'Este for the 20th Cernobbio Forum. At the time, he was a deputy prosecutor of the Italian Republic, at the top of his fame, and was the leader of the so-called "Mani Pulite" (clean hands) judicial inquiry on corruption within the entrepreneurial and political circles in Italy. He had decided that the Forum would have been the most suitable place to communicate with entrepreneurs, in a time of nervousness and turmoil caused by investigations and arrests for corruption.

On the occasion of his participation, Di Pietro said to the Italian entrepreneurs who where attending the event: "Enough with this struggle, we have to work together so that what happened does not happen again".

1999, 25th Cernobbio Forum

1999 was the year that would have marked the beginning of the Dot.com crisis, which hit the first companies to operate mainly or exclusively through the internet, and forced many of them to close down and declare bankrupt. In a time of rapid development of information and communication technologies, the 25th Forum in Cernobbio also addressed the fairly new topics of "e-business" and "e-commerce".

The session "Today’s world of tomorrow: global e-business" was attended by Timothy Koogle (first CEO and President of Yahoo!), Friedrich Fröschl (Chairman and CEO, Siemens), and Elio Catania (Member of the Board and Executive Committee, Telecom Italia). 

1999, 25th Cernobbio Forum

In September 1999, exactly one year before the second intifada, the city of Cernobbio was the setting of an historical event: the then President of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, and Shimon Peres, at that time Minister for Regional Cooperation of Israel met in Villa d'Este and shook hands - "the first time since the collapse of the Oslo Accords", commented our CEO, Valerio De Molli, in a 2016 interview with the Corriere della Sera. 

Both Arafat and Peres were awarded the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize - together with Yitzhak Rabin - for their diplomatic commitment towards a peaceful settlement of the conflict in the occupied territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and to ensure that Palestine is recognised as a State.

2000, 26th Cernobbio Forum

Giovanni Agnelli was an Italian entrepreneur, sports manager and politician, main shareholder and managing director at FIAT. He was a regular presence at the Forum from 1981 to 2001. In 1999, he spoke for the first time as a speaker, during Sunday's the panel dedicated to the Agenda for Italy.

Here is a excerpt from his speech: "And our country is a country that always, when it finds itself in difficult situations, if it can measure itself with clear and shared objectives, knows how to regain self-confidence and cohesion, in politics, economy, and society".

In 2000, the second day of the Cernobbio Forum was opened by Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission since 1999, followed by a panel on Monetary Union, and a speech by Giuliano Amato, then President of the Council of Ministers. Those who attended the Cernobbio Forum between the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st could witness the birth of a European political society, talk about the single currency before the introduction of the euro, and share views on the priorities for the European countries. Our name change into "The European House - Ambrosetti" - occurred in 2005 - wanted to stress our pride for our European identity and to communicate a concrete European thinking and openness to dialogue with the outside world. 

Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1986 and Senator since 2001, Rita Levi-Montalcini participated in 10 editions of the Cernobbio Forum, where she gave several enlightening talks on innovation, research, and science. In 2006, at the age of 97, she spoke at the parallel session of the Leaders of the Future, where the audience of under 35 professionals gave her a standing ovation.

«There is no better thing than discovering the world around us and helping those in need», we read in the pages of the Corriere della Sera (September 4, 2006), which reports the enthusiasm kindled by her experience as a Jewish researcher during fascism and the story of a life «casually dedicated to science».

After the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers of September 11, 2001, the issue of combating terrorism was the main topic of public discussions for months, and it was also discussed at the Cernobbio Forum in 2002. A panel, entitled "Terrorism", gathered an American neo-conservative, Richard Perle, the Vice President of the European Commission, Loyola de Palacio, the Secretary General of the Arab League, Amre Moussa, and Tom Ridge, who had been put in charge of a new American agency, the U.S. Office of Homeland Security, 11 days after the attack.

The Cernobbio Forum, thanks to the ever-increasing presence of foreign speakers and guests, also gained relevance in the eyes of the foreign press. In 2003, William Safire, 1978 Pulitzer Prize winner and celebrated New York Times columnist, described the Forum as "a more authoritative event" than the Davos World Economic Forum. 

H.M. Queen Rania Al-Abdullah, Queen consort of Jordan since 1999, spoke at the Forum in Cernobbio in 2005, on its 40th edition, to comment on the key challenges of those years. In her speech, the Queen shared an invitation to dialogue and mutual understanding, recognizing that there are more things that unite us than divide us. She is known for her attention on human rights and humanitarian causes, so much so that in 2009 she was named one of the world’s most powerful women by Forbes for her role as an activist.

In 2007, a President of the Republic of Italy gave for the first time a speech at the Cernobbio Forum. With a live-streamed speech from the Quirinale in Rome, Giorgio Napolitano, who took up office in 2006, inaugurated a tradition that still lasts today at the Forum, which is officially opened by a message from the President. 

On September 15, 2008, exactly one week after the conclusion of the 34th Forum, the biggest bankruptcy in American history was announced. The Lehman Brothers' failure caused a domino effect that brought the US economy to its knees and then had repercussions all over the world, generating a global recession that cost tens of billions of dollars and millions of jobs.

The signs of this "financial catastrophe" were already there: in 2006, Nouriel Roubini (Professor of Economics at the New York University) had warned the International Monetary Fund about an imminent crisis, as he told at the 35th Forum in Cernobbio.

"For once, let us all together - politicians, entrepreneurs, and even journalists, not exempt from guilt - make an additional effort of clarity and sincerity. This is what a ruling class does, one that lives up to its prestige and is aware of its responsibilities", said Ferruccio De Bortoli, then Editor-in-Chef of Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, at the opening of the last day of the 37th Cernobbio Forum (September 4, 2011). At the end of his speech, the audience gave him a long applause. 

The number of women at the Cernobbio Forum has been increasing gradually over the years. In a room which, at the beginning, was predominantly male, women have conquered space and microphones, bringing their opinions and experiences on national and international topics. Our commitment towards variety and inclusiveness of participants is one of the founding principles of the Forum and we also support it through our Women’s Empowerment Observatory, created in 2021 during the G20's Italian Presidency.

Invited to the 41st Cernobbio Forum, Emmanuel Macron took part in the panel "Competitiveness and growth of Europe". At that time, he was France's Minister of Economy, Industry and Digital of the 2nd Valls Government, chosen by President Hollande to replace Arnaud Montebourg - whose anti-austerity positions had created divisions within the French executive. Less than a year later, Macron founded the centrist political movement En marche! (today called Renaissance), with which he independently ran for the 2017 presidential election, winning in the first round with 24.01% of the votes.

The Peres Heritage Initiative is a social award launched at the 43rd edition of the Forum in Cernobbio (September 2017) to remember the legacy of Shimon Peres, who participated in 24 editions of the event. To pass on his legacy of technological innovation and pursuit of peace to future generations, the Peres Heritage Initiative annually awards three young innovators who have launched research or business projects.

The most important developments in Medicine, Genetics, Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics have significant impacts on society, institutions, and economy; they can generate new business ideas, innovation, and new business models. In the 2018, at the Cernobbio Forum we explored the role of technology with Hiroshi Ishiguro, then Visiting Director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory (Osaka University) and a world expert in humanoid robotics.

Ishiguro pursues the goal of making an android similar to a living human being and study how the external appearance - more than the cognitive aspects - influences our modes of interaction. The humanoid "5 Geminoid" - the first humanoid participant in the history of the Forum - endowed with the likeness of its own author, accompanied him to Villa d'Este to demonstrate the results achieved during the experimentations.

Mario Monti first attended the Cernobbio Forum in 1980 and has seated on the speakers' stage for 43 editions. This tradition has followed the evolution of his career, between the academy and the roles he took on in Europe and in Italian politics. The motivation for such a regular presence - he says - is the possibility of having a free exchange of ideas between people with different views and ideals, but also to analyse existing issues and identify concrete solutions, a feature that makes it a "highly competitive" event.

John McCain, a Republican U.S. senator, participated several times in the Cernobbio Forum, as speaker of "Country Focus USA", the panel dedicated to the economic, political and social dynamics of the United States of America, attended annually by a delegation of American political representatives. 

In 2008, he stated: "Presidents and candidates are tasked with leading and articulating their vision of America’s role in the world. The world is more dangerous than it has been since the end of the Cold War. That’s why I think the president should lead and the presidential candidates should lead and talk about this. I am disappointed, I wish there was more talk about it". 

His last participation dates back to 2017, a year before his death: when he finished his speech and thanked the audience, he received a standing ovation from the audience.

In 2019, the Cernobbio Forum went for the first time to space, with the participation of Luca Parmitano, an Italian ESA astronaut. Speaking live from the International Space Station, he said: "I want to be optimistic; this is a moment of great change and every change brings opportunities [...]. NASA, ESA, ESA’s internal agencies and international partners want to push for new exploration [...] the only way to realise great projects is international cooperation [...] we need commitment, we have to believe in it, we have to desire for it to happen".

The pandemic prevented many to participate in the Cernobbio Forum and gave way to a new tradition: the remote hubs. In 2020, 9 hubs were selected to offer to an exclusive audience the opportunity to watch the live-streamed sessions at Villa d'Este, both in Italy and abroad - China, Brazil, USA and Singapore - thanks to the support of partners. 

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For the 2024 edition, we have confirmed the partnership with Italy's Ministry of Foreign and International Cooperation and the ICE Agency to offer all the diplomatic network and offices of the ICE Agency in the world the opportunity to follow the event, to be updated on global, European and Italian trends and scenarios. At the same time, China will host a live streaming hub in Shanghai that will also develop local offline content, due to the time zone. This is possible thanks to the contribution of Generali, the Beijing Club for International Dialogue, and ClearVue Partners. Finally, in Italy, there will be two physical and digital hubs: in Puglia, thanks to Banca Popolare di Puglia e Basilicata and Exprivia; throughout Italy, thanks to SACE, the state-owned insurance-financial group which will open the Forum to Italian SMEs.

In September 2022, 6 months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy join remotely the Cernobbio Forum for a heartfelt appeal to the business community and the media.

"I am grateful for this opportunity to address a message to you right now, when we are all going through a difficult time in this war. [...] All support for Ukraine with weapons, bullets, finances must be confirmed with actions. Russia does not understand the words of peace. [...] I thank you for the strength of Italian words of support, for actions that confirm these words. Thank you for the support to our State, for the support to our people who have found refuge on your land. We will never forget it. I say it frankly, honestly, with the heart of every citizen."

The secrets of the success of the Cernobbio Forum are mainly a meticulous attention to detail, a rigorous punctuality, and the search for the most qualified and prestigious speakers in the world, experts on the priority topics of the moment. Although the structure of the event has not changed much from the 1980s, we are committed to continuous innovation, while respecting guiding principles and traditions. 

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Such a complex event, attended every year by the top managers of national and multinational groups and companies, requires hard work that begins just a few hours after the conclusion of the previous edition. The process starts with the so-called "post-mortem meeting", which carefully analyses every aspect of the event and reviews feedback from participants to make all the necessary improvements to ensure to organise an event that lives up to our high standards. Months of intelligence, reports, invitations and logistical preparations follow, in view of the next edition, as always on the first weekend of September.

The Cernobbio Forum reflects TEHA’s claim, "the future today", because of its focus on current and future trends related to Italy, Europe, and the world. Each year, we present studies carried out in collaboration with business communities and business partners to explore frontier topics.

In 2023, we presented 19 research papers, which covered topics such as artificial intelligence, e-commerce, energy transition and decarbonization, attraction of foreign investments in the pharmaceutical sector, women’s empowerment, National Recovery and Resilience Plan, SMEs export, demographic winter, the Italian diaspora in the world, war in Ukraine, and governance of Italy. Each study, in addition to providing a scenario and development prospects, provides action and policy proposals aimed at decision-makers and institutions.

The strategic study ‘The evaluation of the impacts of the TEHA Forum in Cernobbio for the local territory and the country-system’ quantified the socio-economic value of the organisation of the Forum at a local level - for the areas of Cernobbio and Como - and at a national level. In just 3 days, the 2023 edition generated an overall economic impact of almost 4 million euro, including direct, indirect, induced, and catalysed impact, 45% of which went to the Como Province. The full data will be published during the 50th Forum, which will take place in Cernobbio on September 6-7-8, 2024.