ABSTRACT
Managers can study the Italian Renaissance profitably for both general and specific lessons relevant to the challenges they are meeting at the start of the new millennium. Many of them will already be familiar with the use of Machiavelli’s writings to provide maxims for modern management. The genius of Niccolò Machiavelli and the validity of his perceptions for business today as well as for politics in his time need to be put, for maximum utility and understanding, in the context of a period of staggering intellectual and artistic creativity: the Renaissance.
