It is the profound connection between the real economy and the thought of Carlo Cattaneo that explains the naming of the university after this great thinker.

Cattaneo (Milan 1801 – Castagnola, Lugano, 1869) was a historian, economist and politician and an exponent of republican federalist thought. After an enlightened and positivist education, he played a crucial role in the Five Days of Milan in 1848.

Not only that, he was also an entrepreneur. He was courageous, innovative and always aware of the social responsibility of his actions.

A University of doing, created by businesses for businesses and in constant dialogue with them, could hardly take the name of anyone other than a man who succeeded in conveying through his writings the importance of a blend of humanistic, economic and technical culture.

The cultural premise of LIUC’s educational project is critically determined by the fact that Cattaneo identifies the human element among the productive resources essential to economic development, anticipating a problem and a need that characterise today’s production landscape.

The naming of the Athenaeum after Carlo Cattaneo is thus a tribute to the man who had the intuition to juxtapose human intelligence and will to the three elements of classical economic science – raw materials, capital and labour, thus recognising the centrality of the role of the entrepreneur within the economic system.

Social and cultural development, Cattaneo argued, necessarily passes through the development of ideas, skills and practices that must become part of the baggage of those who aspire to rightfully become part of the future ruling class, with a vocation to work in the business world, in the liberal professions or in institutions.