Word: chaired
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...biggest chair in the world stands seven stories tall, weighs almost 23 tons and is found just to the left of the second traffic light in the tiny town of Manzano (pop. 7,000) in the northeastern corner of Italy near the Slovenian border. The red pine monument is not some avant-garde artistic statement. It's an oversize acknowledgment by the community of the industry that brought immense prosperity to Manzano and 10 small burgs around it over the past half-century. Known as the "chair triangle" (il triangolo della sedia), this district every year produces as many...
Italy is the sick man of Europe these days--its economy has shrunk 4% since 1999, after adjusting for inflation--and the predicament of the chair triangle helps explain why. Along with Germany and France, the nation has been struggling with weak consumer spending, waning productivity and rising government deficits. But unlike its neighbors, Italy lacks large robust corporations that can export their way out of trouble. Many of the thousands of small and medium-size companies that once gave the Italian economy its flexibility and dynamism are poorly equipped to deal with the challenges of a fast-changing world...
...Manzano is to recover its mojo, the chair triangle's entrepreneurs know that they--and not politicians wielding protective tariffs--will be the ones to find it. "This is a moment of maturation," says Fanin, the machine-tool manufacturer, who recently laid off six of his 15 workers. "You can't compete on price. You need to believe in the company and innovate. There's no third...
Manzano's claim to be the chair capital goes back centuries. An 8th century altar in nearby Cividale contains the first trace of chairmaking. During the Renaissance, local carvers and carpenters from the region had their hands full with orders from Venice, 75 miles away. Production of chairs for the masses began in the 1800s, but the real boom came after World War II. Big distributors, primarily from Germany, discovered the local craftsmanship and started buying in bulk, turning Manzano chairs into a $1 billion-a-year business. To cope with the demand, the number of firms grew tenfold...
Aaron D. Chadbourne ’06 has it right. A few weeks ago, the former Student Affairs Committee chair of the Undergraduate Council posted a long e-mail in part replying to my arguments about why a women’s center wasn’t right for Harvard College. I had argued that a women’s center was a bad idea on the grounds that it was, in part, driving the impending renovation of the Yard dorm basements (a very bad idea in itself), and because the idea of a women’s center...