Abstract

At the beginning of the last century, thanks to an endowment provided by a major entrepreneur, Italy's first university of business and economics was founded in Milan. In the plan by Leopoldo Sabbatini, and presented to Bocconi in the final days of the 1900s, economic science would become a key discipline permeating all teaching courses. This was no random choice but one in line with a plan of a political-cultural nature aimed at the training and legitimization of an entrepreneurial class as ruling class, giving voice to a new aristocracy of industry and knowledge. The ambition of both its founders and those running the university was not to limit its aim to the supply businesses and professions with experts and skilled managers, but to lay the foundations for an overhaul of power relations and command roles at the highest levels of governing authorities.