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In search of a new industry: Giovanni Battista Pirelli and his educational journey through Europe, 1870–1871

Knowledge is increasingly considered a crucial resource for economic and business development. However, it is a broad concept that calls for further specifications: different kinds of knowledge call for diverse transfer and learning mechanisms, crucial for their application to economic activity. Focusing on the case of Giovanni Battista Pirelli (1848–1932) – Italian engineer and entrepreneur, founder (1872) of the first Italian rubber company, G.B. Pirelli & Co. – and his educational journey through Europe (1870–1871), this article investigates the complexity of the learning mechanism which in the second half of the nineteenth century allowed a relatively peripheral region like Northern Italy to reduce the gap separating it from the centre of European industrialization. Special attention is devoted to the characteristics of the rubber manufacturing industry and to the specific difficulties encountered in the acquisition and transfer of knowledge (including technology) related to a relatively new and rapidly evolving industry.