Italy is the fifth most industrialized nation in the world and is a member of the G-8, the organization of countries with the largest Gross National Products. It is a nation mostly made up of small to medium, often family-run, companies — with a tendency to be located outside the big cities — which are known for product innovation. There are few large multi-nationals: Fiat, Bennetton, Luxottica, Ferrera Chocolate among them.

The importance of family in Italy — and its impact on business — is a direct result of the unification of the Italian City States in 1861. Before that time, for the more than two thousand years since Rome ruled the world, the territory now known as Italy was made up of diverse and independent city states. Today, a century and a half after unification, these regional diversities still play a part in daily life and business.

Family and regional loyalties remain the cornerstones of Italian society and business, as they have done since before Italy was unified. Language differences in accent and dialects are sharp: the Italian spoken in the north, where there is a strong identification with the Austro-Hungarian empire, is decidedly different from that spoken in the south, with its Greek, Arabic, Spanish and French heritage. Rome, the capital, is the demarcation point for the industrial north and the "Mezzogiorno," the more relaxed south.

Italians have a perspective on history that few other cultures possess. This has engendered a, sometimes, fatalistic approach to life and business and allows Italians to assess a situation and decide at which point to abandon a project, quite a difference from those cultures who "never say die".