Eni launches Joule, an innovative management school for graduates, managers and young entrepreneurs

Eni launches Joule, a new management school for graduates, managers and young entrepreneurs. The educational initiative aims to share with key players of the future the same goals that Eni has integrated in its strategy in the last years: lowering emissions to keep global temperature growth well below 2°C, enabling energy access, contributing to the local development of countries and their energetic resources through investments, competence and technology, as well as committing to research solutions for a low-carbon energy model.

Joule continues the prestigious management training tradition of the Scuola Mattei and the Master MEDEA, the oldest post-graduate course which has trained over 3000 students from 110 countries since 1957. It offers a significant formative addition to the main universities and management schools.

Making use of Eni’s strong internal teaching resources and qualified external partners, the content of the training courses is extensive: from long-term scenarios (decarbonization and the circular economy) to new technologies for sustainable mobility and energy efficiency. From globalisation issues, competitiveness and socio-economic gaps, to intercultural communication, inclusive leadership and digital mindset. 

With the purpose of promoting the development of new businesses and entrepreneurs, Eni’s new school will follow a dual structure with a long term vocation based on specific values:

• Human Knowledge Programme: a training laboratory for graduates, managers and entrepreneurs with the aim of promoting inclusive global management, focusing on human and environmental values.
• Start-Up Initiative: an acceleration and consolidation programme for start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs able to offer support in the energy transition, with a focus on Italy.

 In order to further enhance the Start-Up Initiative programme, the person appointed by Eni for its management and development will be Ricardo Luna, expert in digital innovation and key player in initiatives and events for the technology start-up sector. Riccardo Luna is director of AGI press agency which, under its management, distinguished itself for its contents on digitalization as well as for the divulgation of complex contents and current affairs analysis, always delivered to be clear, inclusive and accessible to the greater public.

The school will become fully active in the 2020-2021 academic year, however, from next autumn, the school will organise experimental initiatives to test acceleration and training programmes.

One of Joules locations, specifically the one dedicated the training, opening and closing of start-ups dedicated programmes, will be based in the renovated Villa Montecucco in Castel Gandolfo. The Villa it’s the historic site of Eni’s management training, founded in 1973 as an Eni Training Start-up Institute (IAFE) in a historic late nineteenth-century cardinal’s residence.

Equipped with the latest generation educational and multimedia instruments (VR training rooms, ledwalls, advanced videoconferences systems, 4k projectors) and a guesthouse containing all the facilities (rooms, restaurant, auditorium), the Villa will also host the main training initiatives on corporate identity for Eni people. In addition, the premises will be the new headquarters of Eni historical archive. The archive’s 5 km of documents, 500 thousand photos and 5,000 audio-visual clips were recently digitalised and made available on eni.com (with a forecast of about 2.8 million documents, equal to 100 terabyte of storage, to be digitalised by 2021).

Like the unit of energy measurement from which it takes its name, Joule aims to be the common denominator in training for the managers and companies of the present and the future.