The Invisible Guide: How ‘Phygital’ Tech is Weaving Itself Into Italy’s Cultural Fabric

18

September

2025

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We frequently picture online-only titans like Netflix or Amazon as the main characters of digital disruption. However, when navigating through new digital business upending entire industries, nowhere is this more visible than in one of the most traditional sectors of the Italian economy: tourism.

As an Italian student, I see my country’s majestic ruins and museums not just as cultural treasures, but as ground zero for digital disruption. While mass tourism unpleasantly overwhelms our cities, a new breed of startups is using a seamless blend of physical and digital to disrupt the traditional “guidebook-and-tour-bus” model. They are creating value in a completely new way, proving that in the era of experience economy, even the world’s oldest heritage can be seen through new, digital lens.

What Is “Phygital” and What Does It Really Mean for Strategy

Indeed, some of the most intriguing innovations occur when the digital and physical worlds collide, a phenomenon known to academics as the “phygital approach.” According to recent studies on Italian cultural tourism startups, these initiatives are empowering tourists to become curators of their own journeys, moving from passive observers to active participants, putting the power of a personalised, deep cultural immersion directly into the hands of the individual visitor (Greco et al., 2024). Therefore, it’s not just using tech on-site; it’s about creating value through three interconnected dimensions:

  1. Interaction: This first aspect is the key to moving from a broadcast to a dialogue. It allows visitors to customise their experience, also giving them the possibility to leave their mark, stimulating a deeper sense of agency and belonging.
  2. Immediacy: The bridge between the digital and physical must be instantaneous. For this reason, tools like QR codes, NFC tags, or location-based triggers are employed to deliver content right when and where it’s most relevant.
  3. Immersion: The digital layer should pull tourists deeper into the narrative of the place, not out of it. At the end of the day, what stays with them is thanks to emotional engagement, not just to visual spectacle.

Phygital In Action: Italy’s Living Laboratory

It is fascinating to read about how some Italian innovators are exploring this spectrum.

The Responsive Museum

Some museums in Italy employ simple yet clever technology in addition to AR. As you move, motion sensors pick up on background noise or changes in the lighting in a space, gently directing your path and changing the mood. This is immersion using ambient intelligence rather than a screen, employing a potent but frequently disregarded tactic.

ZIA’s Conversational Layer

A curious work under development in the Molise CTE research project is ZIA (Grasso, Catalano, Lanza, & Romano, 2024). By adopting the culturally resonant figure of the zietta, this Gen-AI “Local Auntie” aims at animating a trusted, friendly interface to interact with and assist tourists visiting the Belpaese. This way, it feels more like receiving guidance from a local than surfing on a database, which thing encourages hands-on exploration.

The Apulia Metaverse

The Italian region of Apulia has been recreated in the Metaverse (Rizzo, Di Bitonto, Laterza, & Roselli, 2023), so that prospective travellers can virtually visit and engage with local vendors and digital guides even before their trip. Despite its drawbacks, the try before you buy it through a metaverse platform possesses effective strategic value, creating excitement and lessening the uncertainty associated with travel planning.

    The Enabling Ecosystem: (Invisible) Foundations for Phygital Adoption

    Of course, none of this is possible without a solid foundation. Italian universities play a big role in shaping digital startups (Colombelli, D’Amico, & Paolucci, 2023). Additionally, according to the OECD Cogito (2025) report, the unsung heroes are Italy’s efforts to promote public Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi by Italia.it), digital upskill small hospitality businesses, and smart city projects. The implementation of ideas by startups and museums is made easier by this public-digital infrastructure. They can create the svelte vehicles that travel on the digital highway instead of having to start from scratch.

    When the Two Realities Collide

    As earlier work already highlighted (Greco, 2022), good digital strategy in Italy’s cultural sector needs to take into consideration very real limitations. First of all, the price of creating a custom app is still too high for a small museum. For this reason, the approach must prioritise platform-neutral, lightweight tools (like web-based augmented reality) over native apps. Secondly, it’s a mistake to assume that every traveler has the newest smartphone, data plan, and the cunning to use these tools — here comes the digital literacy gap.

    But the greatest strategic risk in preserving the genius loci is the development of a uniform digital layer that gives each heritage site a uniform feel. Instead of overpowering the place’s distinct spirit, the technology should be designed to enhance it: curation, not just creation, is the approach.

    My View: Contextual Personalisation is the Strategic Imperative

    In my opinion, what is really needed is contextual personalisation. I believe more intelligent systems, rather than more immersive graphics, will be the next big thing.

    For instance, a platform that recognises a user’s interests (for example, they love Renaissance art but detest crowds), comprehends their current situation (they are in front of the Uffizi Gallery at 11 am on a busy Tuesday), and provides a highly customised physical intervention will be the winning tactic: “At the moment, the Hall of Botticelli is full. For a more peaceful hallway, turn left here. While you stroll, I’ll send you a two-minute story about this lesser-known painting”.

    Essentially, making Italy a tech demo is not the aim. The goal is to use technology to help each visitor develop a deeper connection with the people, culture, and history they are visiting. And it’s worthwhile to develop that tactic.

    Thanks for sticking with me through this post! I’d love to read what are your thoughts, experiences, or even questions about this! Let’s get a discussion going in the comments.

    Resources

    Colombelli, A., D’Amico, E., & Paolucci, E. (2023). When computer science is not enough: Universities’ knowledge specializations behind artificial intelligence startups in Italy. The Journal of Technology Transfer. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-023-10029-7

    Greco, A. (2022). Cultural startups and the challenge of phygital approaches: Cases from Italy. Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II. https://www.iris.unina.it/handle/11588/993758

    Greco, A., Carignani, A., Clemente, M., & Bifulco, F. (2024). Phygital as a lever for value propositions in Italian cultural tourism startups. Sustainability, 16(6), 2550. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16062550

    Grasso, A., Catalano, S., Lanza, R., & Romano, G. (2024). zIA: A GenAI-powered local auntie assists tourists in Italy. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.11830

    Mazzoni, F., Pinelli, M., & Riccaboni, M. (2023). Measuring corporate digital divide with web scraping: Evidence from Italy. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.04925

    OECD. (2025, July 16). Tradition meets tech: How digital tools are transforming tourism in Italy. OECD Cogito. https://oecdcogito.blog/2025/07/16/tradition-meets-tech-how-digital-tools-are-transforming-tourism-in-italy

    Rizzo, A., Di Bitonto, P., Laterza, M., & Roselli, T. (2023). Development of a metaverse platform for tourism promotion in Apulia. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.11877

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    A new era for the Mountainbike industry

    16

    October

    2022

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    When you think about mountain biking, the first thought will probably be about being outside in vast forests mountains and whatever other terrain you dare to cross. You might not immediately think about digital ecosystems and smart parts.

    Most mountainbikes designed for heavier use have front and back suspension. More high-end bikes have numerous options to fine tune the specific workings of the suspension. Example of this is the adjustment of the high and low speed compression, high and low speed rebound and the amount of air in the fork. From personal experience adjusting these setting requires a lot of experience and trial and error. Small changes such as different types of terrain or even if the weather is wet or dry require totally different setting. Imagine every time you step on the bike around 10 to 20 minutes of fine tuning.

    Live Valve bike diagram
    (FOX Factory, 2022)

    However recently the mountainbike industry has seen a shake-up with the introduction of smart components. The example that will be discussed during this article is the LIVEVALVE technology by (FOX Factory, 2022). LIVEVALVE is an electronically controlled suspension system that uses sensors to automatically adjust the suspension settings according to the terrain (FOX Factory, 2022).

    LIVEVALVE changes the game as they automatically adapt to the different styles of terrain (FOX Factory, 2022). This saves the rider from adapting suspension settings during a ride and even allows for automatic suspension adjustments during rides.

    Live Valve app
    (FOX Factory, 2022)

    (FOX Factory, 2022)

    Additionally the LIVEVALVE is connected to an app which allows the user to change suspension settings. This is revolutionary compared to the traditional mechanical dial tuning without any insight.

    Enduro MTB Buyer's Guide | CANYON CL

    Implications and predictions

    It is hard to predict how these smart components will affect the mountainbike market as a whole. These smart components are still very pricy with LIVEVALVE costing around 3.000-3250 Dollars (Phillips, 2018). Additionally they require batteries that have to be charged (traditionally mountainbikes do not have batteries) which might be an obstacle for some buyers requiring longer off-grid usage or total dependancy during long outdoor trips. One of the major advantage of this LIVEVALVE system is that is lowers the skill-minimum to fine tune the suspension. This will be really helpful for newer or less fanatic mountainbikers. Outside from LIVEVALVE by FOX factory other smart components have also been brought to market with one example being SRAMM AXS which is a smart wireless shifting system for mountainbikes (McCoy, 2019).

    It will be interesting to see how many other sports gear companies will also begin to slowly incorporate more and more smart components. Traditionally these companies have competed on the hardware of the products they sell, but now software will also start to be an important factor. It will be interesting too see if these components will also start to work together and if companies will partner up to create ecosystems.

    FOX Factory. (2022). LIVEVALVE: Fast-acting automated electronic suspension system. https://www.ridefox.com/content.php?c=livevalve-bike

    Philips, M. (2018, September 21). Fox’s electronic live valve suspension will change your rides forever. https://www.bicycling.com/bikes-gear/a22842945/fox-live-valve-review/

    McCoy, S. (2019, February 8). SRAM’s AXS system: Why it matters even though you probably can’t afford it. https://gearjunkie.com/biking/sram-xx1-xo1-eagle-axs-mountain-bike-groupset

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    The API economy of the 21st century

    15

    September

    2022

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    You have probably heard of APIs. If you have a more technical background, you probably understand APIs quite well. But have you thought about how APIs will affect the economy and businesses in the future? This text will not be very technical. I will mostly talk about the side of APIs that might interest business students more: how APIs have changed businesses and industries, how consumers benefit from them, and what are some business-related challenges in the new API economy. But first, let’s get a one-paragraph introduction to APIs so that we are all on the same page.

    APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, are tools that allow software components to exchange information with one another (“What Is an API? – API Beginner’s Guide – AWS,” n.d.). There are many different protocols and architectures that APIs use, but I will not dive deep into this. If you want to dive a little deeper into the technical stuff I would recommend the above reference from Amazon. For the scope of this blog, I think it’s just important to understand that APIs facilitate communication and data exchange between two different softwares. 

    To make you understand how important these APIs are in the 21st-century economy, I will provide a few examples of where APIs are used. If you have ever visited a website that requires you to create a user, you have probably seen the possibility of logging in with a Google or Facebook account. This is possible because of APIs that allow the website to communicate with Google or Facebook. When you order something from a website and pay for it by clicking on the PayPal logo, or iDEAL in the Netherlands, you are seeing an API in use. So as you see, we rely on APIs every day, probably without thinking about it at all. In these examples, we see some of the benefits of the API economy for both companies and users. For companies, this means that products can be developed faster and easier. For example, log-in integrations from Google and Facebook mean that you do not need to code a log-in service for your website yourself, but instead it is provided to you by another company. Third-party log-in also helps consumers as you do not need to create a new account and password for every website. In general, APIs enable a more seamless customer experience for end users.

    However, APIs do not come without their challenges. There are many areas of concern in the API economy and obstacles that firms need to overcome to take advantage of the opportunities that APIs provide. In older companies, the culture of closed-off, proprietary product development is often in contradiction with the openness of APIs that aims to create an ecosystem where third-party providers offer an integrated solution (Sisk, 2015). Also, APIs have some security concerns and poorly designed APIs have resulted in considerable data breaches (Munsch & Munsch, 2020). In addition, APIs make a company more dependent on other companies. In the log-in example above, a website using Google’s log-in is dependent on Google so that users can access their accounts. 

    Despite these concerns and obstacles, APIs are here to stay. For example, Google and Twitter alone process billions of API requests a day (Savitz, 2012). The breakthrough of the API economy also goes beyond big tech companies as considerable adoption is already seen in industries, such as finance and real estate (Sisk, 2015) Thus, it is important for managers to think about strategies to make the most of this technology and for students to understand the API economy in which they will most likely be working in the future.

    References

    Munsch, A., & Munsch, P. (2020). The future of api (application programming interface) security: the adoption of apis for digital communications and the implications for cyber security vulnerabilities.(article 2). Journal of International Technology and Information Management, 29(3).

    Savitz, E. (2012, August 29). Welcome To The API Economy. Retrieved September 15, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/08/29/welcome-to-the-api-economy/?sh=50bbb9e53a21

    Sisk, D. (2015, January 30). API economy. Retrieved September 15, 2022, from https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/tech-trends/2015/tech-trends-2015-what-is-api-economy.html

    What is an API? – API Beginner’s Guide – AWS. (n.d.). Retrieved September 15, 2022, from https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/api/

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    What´s up automotive industry?

    10

    September

    2019

    5/5 (3) The automotive industry is currently in a vast turmoil, thus nobody is able to predict the future as well as to forecast which technologies will have the biggest impact on the automotive industry. Nevertheless, it’s inevitable that a technological wave is disrupting the industry and car companies are forced to react (Blackman, 2019). Besides providing a brief glance on the most impactful changes in the automotive industry, I would like foster a vital discussion, asking for your opinion on the most important technologies and the future of the automotive industry.

    First, passing by the technology of electrified cars is impossible when analyzing the current automotive industry. It is more than just it`s propulsion technology but rather a step towards cleaner roadways and carbon reduced emissions. Therefore, it comes by no surprise that sales of electric cars are peaking at around 5.1 million cars in 2018 (IEA, 2019) , while being at around 200 000 in 2013 (Kane, 2016). Moreover the rise of importance is underlined by the fact that electric vehicles will amount up to 35% of all global new car sales by 2040 (Bannon, 2016). Secondly, the invention of vehicles that are not in need of any human intervention is called autonomous driving. To my mind the impact for the future of the automotive industry are tremendous as the list of advantages are endless. For example, traffic death could be reduced by around 90% or 60% less carbon emissions due to reasons as decreased traffic congestions and increased efficiency of fuel use (Goldin, 2019). Last but not least, the interconnectivity between cars and/ or with traffic infrastructure could create increased revenues, reduced costs, boosted safety and create value opportunities of around 750$ billion until the year 2030 (Bertoncello, Husain and Möller, 2018). Furthermore, advantages are seen in time-saving and increased productivity as accident alerts, traffic conditions and live route optimisation including shorter routes are available (Fernandez, n.d.). Additionally, interconnected cars increase the safety standard as they are able to communicate with road infrastructure or other cars. Therefore, there are forecasts which predict that there will be 380 million connected cars by 2021 and a new ecosystem in the automotive industry. Wait … a new ecosystem?

    Of course, electrification, autonomous driving and interconnectivity are shaping the car industry as just a few technologies ever did before. But are those the most impactful changes to the automotive industry? To my mind those technologies are “only” the enhancers for something that is bigger than those technologies – a new ecosystem in the automotive industry which is boosted by interconnection, automation, electrification and smart algorithms. It´s not about selling cars anymore, but rather about cooperating with new partners in order to deliver the best, most convenient and sustainable mobility service for a new generation of high demanding customers. What are your thoughts – are those really the most important technologies at the moment? And are the technologies just the enhancers for the new ecosystem or is the new ecosystem just an overrated buzzword?

    References:

    Bannon, E. (2016). E-vehicles to be 35% of sales by 2040 thanks to falling battery prices | Transport & Environment. [online] Transportenvironment.org. Available at: https://www.transportenvironment.org/news/e-vehicles-be-35-sales-2040-thanks-falling-battery-prices [Accessed 10 Sep. 2019].

    Bertoncello, M., Husain, A. and Möller, T. (2018). Setting the framework for car connectivity and user experience. [online] McKinsey & Company. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/our-insights/setting-the-framework-for-car-connectivity-and-user-experience [Accessed 10 Sep. 2019].

    Fernandez, T. (n.d.). 6 Key Benefits of Adopting Connected Car Technology | Autotrip. [online] Autotrip. Available at: https://autotrip.com/connected-car-technology-benefits/ [Accessed 10 Sep. 2019].

    Goldin, P. (2018). 10 Advantages of Autonomous Vehicles | ITSdigest. [online] Itsdigest.com. Available at: https://www.itsdigest.com/10-advantages-autonomous-vehicles [Accessed 10 Sep. 2019].

    IEA (2019). Global EV Outlook 2019. [online] Available at: https://www.iea.org/publications/reports/globalevoutlook2019/ [Accessed 10 Sep. 2019].

    Kane, M. (2019). Plug-In Electric Car Sales Visualized From 2011 to 2015. [online] InsideEVs. Available at: https://insideevs.com/news/329358/plug-in-electric-car-sales-visualized-from-2011-to-2015/ [Accessed 10 Sep. 2019].

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