Aleksandra Milan Cortegiano and Daniele Conti contributed to the 2025 report of the Politecnico di Milano Osservatorio Family Office on Innovation and Strategy in Family Office Investments

From Umberto Eco to Family Wealth.

Families today often find themselves at the center of an increasingly wide and complex range of investment opportunities. Yet deciding where to allocate capital is anything but simple — what may be an opportunity for one family can be inadequate or risky for another.
As Umberto Eco wrote in “The Infinity of Lists,” the act of listing is a way to give order to the infinite — to make sense of complexity rather than reduce it.
Similarly, in family wealth management, an asset list is never just an inventory, but a story of identity, values, and continuity
True advisory begins with understanding — transforming complexity into coherence, and wealth into meaning.

This reflection was part of the 2025 Report of the Politecnico di Milano Osservatorio Family Office on Innovation and Strategy in Family Office Investments, prepared by Aleksandra Milan Cortegiano (formerly Kozlica) and Daniele Conti, exploring how families can navigate wealth with awareness, structure, and purpose.