When does negotiation become pure performance? And when can it actually create value for everyone at the table? These were the questions at the heart of the first edition of Leggere il presente, the new conversation series hosted by the Rome campus of SDA Bocconi School of Management, which launched on 17 March 2026 at the school's Via Nibby venue in the centre of Rome.

The format is designed to build community around ideas: each session starts with a book and a concrete question, unfolding into an hour of sharp conversation on finance, geopolitics, technology and the transformation of democratic institutions. An open think tank, at the intersection of academic research and the Roman ecosystem.

A strategic hub for the capital

The evening was opened by Gimede Gigante, Director of the Rome Campus of SDA Bocconi School of Management, who traced the campus's journey from its founding in 2022 to its current phase of strategic expansion. "Our Rome campus is a strategic platform, a hub for education, research and partnerships with the capital's ecosystem," Gigante said, noting that Rome, as the seat of diplomacy, culture and institutions, offers SDA Bocconi a unique opportunity to engage with the distinctive character of an internationally minded city.

For the Rome campus, 2026 marks a year of scale-up, with a record number of initiatives planned across executive education, research and community events. Leggere il presente is one of them, and not merely a cultural appointment. In Gigante's words, "a strategic moment to turn this campus into a think tank where we can discuss current affairs, economics, finance and politics through the books of those who study and live these subjects."

Negotiation is not about winning

The first book on the reading list is Negoziare con successo. Strategie e tecniche per creare valore (Egea, 2025) by Leonardo Caporarello, Associate Dean for Online Learning and Professor of Practice of Leadership and Negotiation at SDA Bocconi. The central argument: in an era of growing polarisation, the tendency to frame every negotiation as a zero-sum game, where one side's gain is the other's loss, is at once widespread, well-documented and ultimately self-defeating.

Caporarello outlined four mechanisms that push negotiators toward competitive behaviour even when their brief would allow for collaboration: the assumption that interests are divergent (between 40 and 70% of negotiators believe the other party's interests are opposed to their own, without ever checking); cognitive bias under stress; the dominance of group identity in politicised contexts; and the perception of scarcity, amplified by the post-Covid crisis.

"Negotiation is a process of dialogue and continuous learning through which two or more parties, often with different interests, search for and build shared solutions," the professor recalled, quoting his own definition. An approach that calls, in equal measure, for cognitive and emotional skill.

Trump, Zelensky, Europe and tariffs: negotiation in the real world

The heart of the evening was a conversation with Greta Cristini, geopolitical analyst, moderated by journalist Stefano Feltri. Three cases were examined through the lens of negotiation: the Zelensky-Trump meeting at the White House on 28 February 2025, the European response to US tariffs, and the Iranian nuclear file.

It was Feltri who set the tone from the outset: "We are living in a world run by a negotiator who lacks most of the qualities Leonardo describes. Trump does not look like the kind of negotiator Leonardo writes about." A pointed observation that opened the debate on the concrete cases.

On the now-famous confrontation in the Oval Office, Cristini offered a structural reading: "Zelensky didn't fully grasp the kind of interlocutor he was dealing with. He may have underestimated the situation, or perhaps hadn't realised they were conducting entirely different negotiations." The real stakes, she explained, were broader: the Ukraine dossier was the table on which the Trump administration was playing its reopening of relations with Russia, with China as the underlying target.

Caporarello added the technical dimension: that show had been scripted well in advance. "Trump's style is nothing new to anyone who has followed him for years. The frame is everything: We gave you 350 billion, you don't have the cards, you're either with us or you're out. That is a positioning strategy, not an improvisation."

On tariffs, the assessment was nuanced: the European decision to accept the 15% rate without retaliating was rational in the short term, but not necessarily the only option available. "Inserting a suspension was an intelligent move because we needed to buy time," Caporarello said. "But we are not in a symmetric relationship: you cannot negotiate bilaterally when Europe's energy and military dependencies on the United States are structural." The stronger path, in his view, would have been to build a multilateral coalition with other major players, as was partly attempted through the Mercosur and India agreements.

"European countries know they are too dependent on the United States for security guarantees and military technology," Cristini observed. "The idea of strategic autonomy that would give us greater room to manoeuvre still feels too difficult to imagine. For now, the most immediate solution is simply not to provoke him."

The grammar of complex negotiations

Across the cases, Caporarello identified three recurring elements that define what he called the "grammar" of negotiation in complex systems: ambiguity (not always a flaw, often a tool for containing escalation), real leverage (which matters far more than declared positions), and time, which governs the reversibility of decisions and the rhythm of conflict.

A conclusion that is as much philosophical as technical: in complex systems, the professor reminded the room, you do not negotiate outside the conflict. You negotiate inside it.

The question that ran through the entire evening, how many of the interactions we call negotiations actually are, reflects a commitment SDA Bocconi has been developing on the subject for years. A body of work that operates on multiple levels: executive education, with programmes both on campus and online for managers and professionals; research and public debate, through books and articles published on SDA Bocconi Insight; and an ongoing dialogue with the leading international academic communities in the field, of which SDA Bocconi is an active member.

The full calendar of upcoming Leggere il presente sessions is available here.