SEDUCTIVE MINDS WANTED – Talk with Lorenzo De Rita

Born in Rome 56 years ago, he currently lives between Rome and Amsterdam, where he directs The Soon Institute, a think tank on the near future that explores new forms of communication and prototypes of models for the society to come.
Before focusing on innovation and experimental communication, Lorenzo was Creative Director of Colors Magazine (Benetton Group), and before that, he had a long career in advertising, working in Rome, Milan, New York, Paris, and Amsterdam. He held executive roles in international agencies (most notably HAVAS, where he was President of the group’s three Dutch companies and a member of the Worldwide Board of Creative Directors), managing accounts such as adidas (Worldwide Creative Director) and Nike (Creative Director Italy), for which he led the creative direction of global campaigns for events like the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup, as well as clients like Volvo (Creative Director Europe), Levi’s, VW-Audi, Ferrari Group, and Heineken, to name just a few.
During his years in the advertising industry, Lorenzo’s work was recognized and awarded with the industry’s top international prizes, including 13 Lions at the Cannes Advertising Film Festival (including the prestigious Titanium Lion, awarded to the most innovative campaign of the year for his work on Volvo).
Today, Lorenzo often teaches as a Visiting Professor in universities in Italy and abroad (including the Politecnico di Torino, where he runs an experimental course titled *Engineering of Ideas*, and at the Eni University, where he created a master’s in *Chemistry of Imagination*), and is regularly invited to speak at major industry panels around the world to present his theories on *Phosphorescent Thinking* (his personal theory of creativity) and, more broadly, his views on social innovation.
He conducts regular workshops on innovation, humanistic technology, philosophy of thought, experimental education, new media, design, photography, and creative processes.
He is also part of the “Italian Excellences Abroad” group of Aspen Institute Italia; publishes artist books through his tiny publishing house (The Soon Institute Publishing House); and is a researcher in “parallel botany” (for years, he has classified surreal, non-existent flowers of his own invention in a personal taxonomy).
He recently founded a company for “fantastic construction” called I.C.C.A (Construction Company for Castles in the Air), where he designs human-scale cities called 1:1.
His latest project is *The Phosphorescent Room*, the first “Imagination Research Centre” in Italy — a space, mental before physical, as vast as the curiosity of those who inhabit it. A place entirely dedicated to studying, teaching, and experimenting with new forms of imagination, with the goal of reigniting the mental energy needed by companies, institutions, and individuals to use their imagination to think the unthinkable and imagine the unimaginable. And not simply things that can be sold cheaply…