Prysmian Academy: where our people grow

Prysmian Academy: where our people grow

OCTOBER 2017

Global leader in the cable and systems manufacturing industry, Prysmian Group has been one of the first Italian companies to create its own international school for professional and managerial training and education. Prysmian Academy is composed by 2 main curricula: the School of Management, launched five years ago in partnership with SDA Bocconi, and the internal Professional School, completely arranged by the Group in its venues, where Prysmian managers become teachers training their own colleagues. While the latter introduces Prysmian employees in the Group culture, expertise and offer while developing technical skills, the former has the goal of strengthening their leadership and management skills.

The School of Management is now enlarged through the partnership with a wide international network of Business Schools that contribute to the development of educational programs in the Group’s diverse Regions of activity: SMU (Singapore), Fudan University (China), University of South Carolina (USA), FGB EAESP (Brazil), Steinbeis University (Germany), Corvinus University (Hungary), ESADE (Spain), ESSEC (France) and the Stockholm School of Economics (Sweden).

As Fabrizio Rutschmann, Prysmian Group SVP HR & Organization, stated soon after the signing of the agreement in 2012, “we are a public company daily committed in creating value for all its stakeholders, and our people represent the most valuable asset we have. That is why we decided to invest in the education and also in the work placement of young talents that represent the very future of the company”.

“We are a public company daily committed in creating value for all its stakeholders, and our people represent the most valuable asset we have”

Fabrizio Rutschmann

Prysmian Group SVP HR & Organization


Five years later, Prysmian Group Academy – the name bestowed to the Corporate University – is a consolidated training program in the global scenario, involving and training Prysmian’s people from every country, level and job function. That is why, in a major step in its strategy of developing human capital, Prysmian Group inaugurated its new Training Center at the new, which will host the courses of the Academy.

“We are extremely proud to have inaugurated the Training Centre at our new Headquarters”, said Rutschmann, “This is a further step forward in our strategy of developing human capital, which represents a valuable, essential resource for the Group”.

The numbers of the five years of activity of the Academy are astonishing: more than 1,500 attendees and 100 training days per year, a figure that will further increase in 2017, touching 150 days. The participants have received training from 50 SDA Bocconi faculty members, from professors teaching in some of the world’s foremost business schools, as well as from 180 senior Prysmian employees who have made their know-how and expertise available to the company and the students. Now, the Academy boasts also six new regional academy opened in Prysmian Group’s regional hubs in the five continents, from America to Asia and Oceania, and two Technical Excellence Centers: the Manufacturing Academy opened in 2016 in the factory in Mudanya (Turkey) and the R&D Academy that will be shortly inaugurated in Lexington, South Carolina.


During the current year, two classrooms will host courses for the two major departments in which the Academy is organized: the School of Management, which aims at strengthening leadership and management skills, and the Professional School, a technical school whose nine Academies by function and 35 courses are aimed at developing and strengthening skills through their transfer from the most senior staff to their younger counterparts..

The cooperation has been a stimulating and exciting project for the Bocconi University as well. Markus Venzin, Full Professor of Strategy and Academic Director of Prysmian Academy, underlined that “through the cooperation with Prysmian we developed new ways to increase the impact of high education on the learning-on-the-job activities in a global company. But the relation with Prysmian is much more than this: it is a wide cooperation built on the will of a mutual knowing and understanding.”

“Through the cooperation with Prysmian we developed new ways to increase the impact of high education on the learning-on-the-job activities in a global company”

Markus Venzin

Full Professor of Strategy and Academic Director of Prysmian Academy

During these years, the work on formation has been further strengthened by a parallel work on study and research by SDA Bocconi on the company dynamics, drawing 7 case studies about the major challenges the Group is facing all over the world, through didactic tools and simulations, analysis of the company climate and in-depth observations on strategic innovations and m&a. Moreover, since 2016, ten senior managers graduated at the topmost level of the Academy may obtain a privileged access to the highest management course at SDA Bocconi, the Global Executive MBA.

The Academy is a concrete tool for sharing managerial and technical best practices. Thanks to its international nature, it fosters and innovative, entrepreneurial approach to business and a share spirit of diversity and integration. A partnership between two point of reference in the respective sectors, to identify and train the managers and the leaders of tomorrow.