Northeastern Italy, which includes Emilia-Romagna, is estimated to be a regional powerhouse on the international stage. Its total GDP is around €465 billion. Annual trade volume exceeds €315 billion: €200 billion in exports and €115 billion in imports. Bologna is the world capital of packaging machinery and the heart of the Motor Valley. Nonetheless, GDP growth in the Northeastern regions is forecast to be below 1% in 2026. In Catalonia, where Barcelona is the capital, the economy is forecast to grow by approximately 1.5%–2.3% in 2026. Business leaders in this region have integrated formal philosophical training or specific management philosophies into their leadership. In Bologna, entrepreneur Leandro Pallozzi encourages the presence of a Philosophical Director (PD) in companies. Beyond the hedge of profit lies the plain of the desired meaning of the enterprise. Running through it is the PD, a rising figure in corporate culture that is expected to emerge with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI). The PD draws the ethical framework to address the moral dilemmas of AI and, more generally, innovation, ensuring that neither forces people into a corner. Furthermore, the PD views problems from multiple angles, thereby helping suppress cognitive biases. Google is leading the way by hiring an “In-House Philosopher” to guide discussions on data ethics and the ethical impact of new technologies.
The PD figure may emerge following a profound disruption of the “Triadic Canon.” Its dominant melodic configuration should give way to harmonic form. The melodic canon comprises political parties, corporations, and the media. Conflict over leadership is constantly raging between these three parties. From time to time, the incumbent leader is a conductor whose voice is imitated. We rely on rational and logical calculations that ignore the paradox of knowledge, which reveals contradictions and truths that calculations cannot grasp. By rejecting paradox, knowledge remains a cataloguing of facts and data considered certain. Common sense leads to error and hinders research that contradicts the immediate perception provided by calculations. The entire community uncritically accepts a set of beliefs.
By contrast, the Harmonic Triadic Canon is a polyphonic ensemble in which all of our voices simultaneously sing distinct, harmonising melodies. The contrast between the voices is high, yet harmony is maintained. Paradox is accepted as noise in the data that reveals inconsistencies (a lack of harmony between two pieces of information that should coincide) and anomalies (unusual events), and that uncovers profound, previously invisible truths. A vision emerges that overturns the set of ingrained beliefs that shape how we perceive reality and behave. We learn through direct observation that the natural world exists independently of our mental patterns and perceptions, and that data must be subjected to a paradox that changes the pace and direction of knowledge, going against opinion and the obvious, and beyond the binary logic that reduces all complexity to two mutually exclusive states: 1 (True/Active) and 0 (False/Inactive).
The Philosophical Director observes profit maximisation, the measure of value sought by shareholders, through the lens of human intelligence that generates aphorisms and imaginative and emotional expressions. The vast majority of people working in the economic sector have been led to believe that what matters is earning money through an efficient economic system. They fail to consider that monetary wealth is not the same as real wealth. Among the components of the latter are the health of nature and the environment in which we live, the value of belonging to a community, and peace among peoples. These are goods that cannot be measured with a common unit of measurement. Consequently, the PD naturally wonders whether and how artificial intelligence could contribute to the development of “total accounting” tools, the widespread adoption of which would force society to redefine the meanings of money, wealth, and well-being. Social philosophy could return to the centre of the economic debateò.
