Italy’s Prime Minister wants to learn from Jony Ive

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jony_desk
Italian premier Matteo Renzi's desk. Photo: La Stampa.

Summer reading tends to lean towards the frothy or the ambitious. It looks like Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is definitely in the ambitious camp.

His summer reads, as shown on his desk, include a work by an economist about innovation, a tome on the power of the labor force, and, oh yeah, Leander Kahney’s Jony Ive The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products.

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Italian daily La Stampa snapped Renzi’s summer reading as laid out on his desk — notice the MacBook — the politician visited a Feltrinelli shop in Rome.

The Jony Ive biography is an interesting choice for the 39-year-old whose meteoric rise in politics gave many hope. The two men seem a study in contrast: Renzi is by most accounts a firebrand where Ive is soft spoken. Renzi was once a game-show contestant — winning €48,000 (about $64,000) — on the Italian edition of Wheel of Fortune, whereas Apple’s star designer is self-effacing and rather introverted. Renzi, when not governing Italy, heads home to a bland, gated house near Florence. Ive leaves Cupertino everyday to head back to this retro-tastic manse in San Francisco’s ‘Billionaire’s Row.’

One thing’s for sure: Renzi has reason to study up. Italy’s youngest PM ever has his work cut out for him: The boot-shaped country just officially slipped back into recession and Silvio Berlusconi, newly rehabilitated by courts, threatens to bring the political old guard back with a vengeance.

What lessons do you think Italy’s Premier could take from Jony’s playbook?

Via: Cetta Leonardi on Twitter

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