From Mirabella Imbaccari, a small town in the province of Catania, comes a story of entrepreneurial success that brings a message of hope to the millions of young unemployed who are fleeing Italy in search of better opportunities abroad.
In this town of 5,000 people, on the slopes of the Monti Erei, reports Italy's Corriere della Sera, a group of local young people work to provide companies around the world innovative software solutions using cutting-edge technologies, such as those employed to provide personalized advertising to multinational companies like Nokia, Nivea, Ferrero and Mattel.
It all began in the 1990s thanks to the entrepreneurial spirit of two young Sicilians, Luca Naso and Riccardo D’Angelo, a degree in Physics and years spent abroad doing research at major universities. Instead of continuing to live abroad, where they had great career opportunities, they decided to return to their hometown and established EdisonWeb in 1995.
They call themselves “software artisans” and through their services have gone as far as New York, where the myriad of taxis zipping through the city use a software EdisonWeb created to determine the “type of customer” getting on the cab to then display a targeted advertising on the screen. The same service is used by supermarkets and stores.
“Don’t dare stop dreaming,” as Naso once said during a conference at the local chamber of commerce, is the message they bring.
