L’intelligenza artigiana nell’era dell’incertezza. Verso un modello di resilienza sostenibile e umana delle PMI italiane

The contemporary global economy is characterized by heightened instability, geopolitical uncer tainty, rapid technological acceleration, and significant social transformations that are redefining the role of small firms and craft-based enterprises. These dynamics not only reshape business mod els and value chains but also challenge the very identity of firms, particularly those embedded in local territories where a culture of making constitutes a distinctive and intangible asset. Within this evolving landscape, Italian craftsmanship serves as an illuminating vantage point for examining the adaptive capacity of the national productive system. Craft enterprises operate as nat ural laboratories of resilience, capable of hybridizing tradition and innovation, local embeddedness and openness, manual expertise and technological tools. In contrast to larger firms that rely on au tomation and global platforms, craft-based SMEs are engaging in context-specific and sustainable forms of digitalization that support creativity, product customization, and customer relationships. This contribution proposes shifting the analytical focus from the traditional framework of digital transformation to the concept of «craft intelligence», conceived as a situated, creative, and relational form of knowledge that integrates technology without fully adhering to its dominant logic. While re cent management and innovation scholarship tends to emphasize technological adaptation processes, the argument advanced here is that, for craft SMEs, adaptation is equally cultural and identity-driven. «Craft resilience» thus emerges as a form of contextual intelligence in which sustainability, territo rial rootedness, and human craftsmanship constitute the foundational elements of a strategic model capable of responding effectively to geopolitical turbulence and ongoing digital transformation.