Giovanni Villani built a career in business at a period when the rules of commerce were themselves changing.
The record lists Giovanni Villani as Italian merchant and historical writer (1280-1348).
Giovanni Villani was born at Florence in 1280. His recorded nationality is Kingdom of Sicily.
Commerce then ran on personal credit, family networks and letters that took weeks to arrive; trust was the scarcest asset.
He worked as diplomat, chronicler and historian.
Enterprises outlive their founders or they do not, and that is the whole test.
That the business was built from Kingdom of Sicily shaped it: capital, regulation and market size differ by country, and they decide what is even attemptable.
Giovanni Villani died in 1348, aged 68. What remains is the enterprise and its consequences, which is the only durable measure of a commercial life.
