The leading authority on innovative design, Vito Di Bari is an acclaimed futurist who is changing the world through his cutting edge design solutions (using recent discoveries in various fields such as augmented reality, sensors, nanotech and robotics) in various areas, including fashion design, interior design, and urban installations. An accredited author of eleven books and numerous published papers, Di Bari also adds his unique perspective to the above topics in weekly columns for various newspapers and magazines. As part of the City of Milan’s candidacy for the 2015 Universal EXPO, Vito Di Bari has been chosen to be the Innovation Designer with his Digital Expo Project, showcasing his insight and designs to create a city of the future. In addition, Di Bari also participates in worldwide events as a keynote speaker to explain to corporations and individuals how to change their behaviors in order to succeed in the future business world.
Di Bari’s areas of expertise include:

• Innovation Designer
• Futurist
• Public Speaker
• Author, Columnist, TV Show Host
• University Faculty
• Board Chairman and Member

Innovation Designer

Vito Di Bari has secured his visions and legacy by founding Lab Next – a cutting edge international research laboratory, named “Milan’s think tank” by Wired Magazine, where he currently serves as Scientific Director. Di Bari’s creative and innovative business solutions have contributed to industries across the board, including most recently, SKY, MTV, Universal Studios, Barilla, FOX, Kodak, Coca Cola, Volkswagen, LG, Vodafone and Samsung. Currently residing in Miami, Di Bari has founded Di Bari Innovation Design – a research and design studio that specializes in the application of new technologies, which will provide creative solutions for companies and public institutions.

Speaker and Author

A recognized author on innovative theories, Di Bari has published a multitude of works including the books: Social Killer (2010), Short Circuit (2009), Web 2.0 (2007), The Future is Already Here (but we don’t know it yet) (2006), 2015, Weekend in the Future (2005), Strategies for the Next Economy (2003), The Digital Economy Encyclopedia (2002), Key Words for the Net Economy (2001), and Multimedia Management (2000). Represented by a variety of agencies worldwide, Di Bari attends between 25-30 annual conventions where he fills the position of keynote speaker or acting chairman. In addition to his books, Di Bari is a contributing writer for various magazines including WIRED, Harvard Business Review, Panorama (Italy) and Il Sole 24 Ore (Italy). He has also appeared as a host for television’s Discovery Channel, Italia 1 (Italy) and other media engagements, including guest speaker on many talk shows.

University Faculty

Di Bari has held numerous titles of professorship, including: Professor of Design and Management of Innovation at the Faculty of System Engineering of the Polytechnic University; Professor of Innovation Design at the Bocconi University in Milan; Professor of New Media Theories and Techniques at the Communication Science and Technology Faculty of the IULM University in Milan; Professor of Multimedia Innovation Management at the Computer Science Faculty of the Polytechnic University in Milan; Professor of Design and Management of Multimedia Systems at the Design Faculty of the Polytechnic University in Milan; Scientific Director of the Master’s of Science in Marketing, Communications and New Technologies at the Business School of Il Sole 24 Ore.

Board and Committee

Di Bari currently chairs the Scientific Committee of ASCAI (the Italian Association of Corporate Communications Executives) and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Accenture Foundation, the Scientific Committee of Harvard Business Review (Italy) and the Executive Board of the Industrial Italian Districts Association. He has contributed his expertise in multiple areas of media, holding the positions of Executive Vice-President of SPN (Satellite Program Network) – America’s first satellite television network based in New York, Executive Director of UNESCO‘s (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) IMI (International Multimedia Institute) based in Paris, Member of the Scientific Committee of the International Institute for Opera and Poetry of UNESCO, Member of the Fiction Financing Committee Euro-Aim MEDIA with the Council of Europe (Bruxelles), Chairman of the Arts & Communication International Fellowship of the Rotary International (Evanston, Il) and CEO of DB Usa Inc. (Beverly Hills, Ca).

VITO DI BARI, THE BEGINNING
This is the prequel. An unauthorized autobiography
of what does not fit into the Curriculum Vitae, ever.

Vito Di Bari is born in Bari, Italy.

Italy is in southern Europe, Bari is in southern Italy. Vito is definitively a southern guy, any more southern Italian and he would be African.

Bari is on the sea. For centuries, it has been a port of merchants and a crossroads at the entrance of the Adriatic Sea and on routes to the Orient and Africa. People from Bari (“Baresi”) are loving and jaded, lazy and extreme, negotiators and boasters. And Vito is genetically a Southern ‘good ole boy’, and proud of it. Over the years, he travels the world, but he never becomes a true cosmopolitan; he would rather remain a Southern guy who travels the world. He spends most of his childhood in the streets of Bari, mainly playing soccer. And he spends his adolescence and youth chasing after girls. Vito’s social life is split between soccer and girls, therefore everything is complicated by his tendency to form groups of eleven. In his adulthood, he discovers indoor soccer, and thus becomes more selective, with girls too. This is an important step towards maturity, something that as a young man seemed to be a distant goal, and in some respects, still seems that way.

From elementary school to college, he always earns the highest grades and graduates from university with Honors. Vito acquires an education doing exactly what is necessary: the highest grades possible in the least amount of time. He studies little, as he is busy with writing poetry, reading all the classics (and anyone who shows a little insanity in their writing, from Allen Ginsberg to Vladimir Majakovski), acting and directing in theater, and spending the afternoons on the phone. Yes, with girls. The days when the phone bill arrives are among the most difficult of his adolescence as his father scolds him harshly, but in the end, pays the bill.

Vito learns and understands the value of accountability, but also that crime, if used in moderation, can pay off. He will spend the rest of his life swinging between the two concepts.

During the week, he spends his evenings in video on a local TV station and at night, he speaks with a hoarse voice on the radio; he sleeps in the morning, and at lunchtime, eats breakfast. On Saturday nights, he pretends to play the Fender bass in a band, only to meet girls, but in the meantime he unknowingly gets used to the stage. On Sundays, he plays soccer in a College League, as right wing, and his job is to cross the ball into the goal area, this is how he learns about the “Gaussian curve”. TV, radio, stages and Gaussian curves: Vito has them become the foundation of his professional career.

In 1978, Vito leaves Bari and sets out on the discovery of the world. He quickly learns the first law of physics: every Southern boy, if allowed to roam freely, tenaciously aims to the north, like a compass. At the age of twenty-three, he ends up in Milan. He likes to write, already knows how to do radio and television, he has all his dreams sorted out and lined up in rows of eleven. He is very young, Milano looks very beautiful, the perfect city for a new start, and so he decides to go from there.

In Milan, Vito rubbed elbows with avant-garde intellectuals who were focused on new media. Later on, they will be joined by Felix Guattari, with all the merry men of the nouveaux philosophies. Vito ends up in Paris, becomes co-founder of l’Association de Liberation des Ondes (ALO) (literally meaning “the association for the freeing of the radio air waves”), writes for the French newspaper Liberation and frequents the house of Simone de Beauvoir, who at that time was dating Sartre (and her house overlooked a cemetery, Vito then understood the root of Jean Paul’s sadness and – ultimately – understands the roots of existentialism).

At the age of twenty-four, he straightens his way and secures an executive position in Rizzoli Corriere della Sera Group, in the newly established Film and TV division. He works closely with legendary executives such as Leo Lesurum and Bruno Tassan Din; his father (Vito’s, not Tassan Din’s) is very happy and sees that his son seems to be pursuing a path that will eventually lead him to an excellent salary, health insurance and retirement plan. Well, it will not turn out that way exactly, but Vito began his experience managing the first Italian television syndication; it was called CTA – Compagnia Televisioni Associate (Associated Television Corporation), and consisted of all the television owned by Italian newspaper publishers.
Directing the news was Maurizio Costanzo. In the summer of 1981, the scandal breaks of the P2 Lodge broke out, involving Costanzo and Tassan Din, but Vito is already elsewhere, since January, in New York City.

In New York, Vito continues his executive career in new media at the Satellite Program Network (SPN), holding the position of Executive Vice President of Programming – Europe. At this time, SPN is the first TV satellite network in the world and is re-transmitted by hundreds of cable TV networks in the USA and Canada. The network will eventually change its name to CNBC, after being bought by NBC Universal, and today it has over 400 million viewers worldwide. Vito turns twenty-five and collaborates with Ed Taylor in the start up of a new generation of TV networks and it is an exciting experience. This experience impacts his life greatly, and Vito will subconsciously repeat it in the years ahead, forecasting the future: media after media, chip after chip, sensor after sensor. And here he starts a race that will never end, because the finish line is in constant motion, and will take him from the communication channels to events, project and products.

Vito is now 26 years old. This is the end of the pre-quel. The rest, as they say, is history, and you can find it in the bio.