This text is excerpted from Michele Bonfiglioli’s *25 Years of Lean Thinking, Italian Style*. The excerpt presents Marta Bertolaso’s perspective on business, meaning, complexity, and relationships as fundamental levers for understanding change.
At a time when the market demands speed and simplification, Marta Bertolaso responds with three words that seem to point in the opposite direction: cooperation, generativity, and integration.
A philosopher of science and professor at the Campus Biomedico in Rome, she moves with ease between the complex systems of biology and those—no less intricate—of human organizations.
“There is nothing more practical than good philosophy,” she states, with that serene clarity that comes from years of study and hands-on experience in the field.
Because today, more than ever, thinking is acting.
Doing business, Bertolaso explains, is not just an economic matter. It is a quest for meaning. It means knowing how to interpret contexts, needs, and opportunities, and to generate something new.
In this regard, philosophical thought is not an abstract luxury, but a vital tool for those who lead companies, govern systems, or simply want to find their bearings in a changing world.
We live in an age where technology promises certain, rapid, and measurable answers. But that is precisely where projects often fail: when we forget that data is not neutral, that decisions require judgment, and that human beings are not algorithms.
The real risk, he warns, is not technology itself. It is that humans will abdicate their decision-making role—that they will delegate to machines the task of understanding themselves and the world.
According to Prof. Bertolaso, one of the major post-pandemic shifts concerns the way we understand leadership.
After the pandemic, many leaders realized that authority can no longer be based solely on roles or functional expertise. The question is: what kind of impact can you embody as a person? What kind of presence do you offer to others?
It’s not just about leading, but about navigating the context with intelligence, distinguishing the essential from the noise.
And it is precisely this noise—media noise, information noise, operational noise—that, according to Bertolaso, is one of the great enemies of our time.
Where there is too much noise, there is usually no center. The best decisions don’t make a splash.
At the heart of his thinking lies a subtle yet profound shift: complexity is not governed; it is interpreted.
We always talk about "governance of complexity," but the step we need to take is toward "governance in complexity." It’s not about controlling everything. It’s about acting with prudence, vision, and a genuine presence.
A shift in mindset is needed:
One-size-fits-all solutions no longer work. The future belongs to those who know how to combine approaches, knowledge, and sensitivity—to those who can read contexts and recognize the value of authentic relationships.
Relationships are the common thread running through all of Marta Bertolaso’s thinking.
Authentic relationships foster interdependence. They are not mere interactions between machines. They are spaces of freedom, responsibility, and shared meaning.
Yet, even in offices, people prefer to send a message to someone just a few meters away.
We talk to each other less and less. Even when physically close, we seem distant. This isolation is the true silent pandemic of our time.
Two episodes, recounted with discretion and intensity, reveal a great deal about her relationship with her students.
The first is the story of a young man who, after yet another Saturday night spent on social media, decides to log off.
"I wanted to know what I like, not what I’m supposed to like," he tells her. “And after just one week, I already feel like I’m recognizing myself again.”
The second concerns a brilliant engineering student who, during an exam, refuses the highest grade.
"Neither you nor the system can judge me," he states.
Bertolaso calmly
replies, "To challenge a system, you first have to understand it."
From there, a dialogue emerges that goes deeper than the grade itself.
There are young people who know how to step back and reset the game. And they do it together with others, not alone. Relationships and solidarity aren’t mere moral trappings—they’re organizational principles.
In her book *Technological Humanism*, Marta Bertolaso proposes an oxymoron that is only apparent: a bridge between technology and meaning.
Humans have always built, designed, and interacted with tools. But what changes everything is the way they do it.
The real problem isn’t technology, she repeats. It’s the person who forgets that machines don’t think any differently in our absence than in our presence. It’s the abandonment of judgment, responsibility, and freedom.
In a world seeking shortcuts and certainties, philosophy can be the place to pause, observe, and choose.
Not to withdraw, but to act more effectively.
Finally, we ask her: if you were to leave a message for those who lead people, for business leaders, for teachers, what would it be?
Take relationships seriously.
Stop looking for the single, optimal, definitive solution.
Learn to combine different approaches—in a local, concrete, and context-specific way.
The leader of the future, she concludes, will not be the one who imposes, but the one who interprets.
The one who knows how to distinguish. The one who sees ahead.
The one who fosters coexistence and creates space for others.
And if silence is needed to do that, then let’s start there.
The full interview with Marta Bertolaso can be found in the podcast FUTURO. Conversations of Common Sense.
Watch the interview on YouTube
Listen to the interview on Spotify
To read the full chapter and explore other topics in the book, check out Michele Bonfiglioli’s *25 Years of Lean Thinking, Italian Style*.
ai translated