Twenty years of learning

2005–2011 · Young trainers, and a stubborn idea

The first courses were taught from 2005, by Massimo De Donno in Turin and then, from 2006, in Milan. In the same year Giacomo Navone opened in Florence.

The conviction behind it: most people are not incapable of learning, they have never been taught how to do it in a way suited to their own mind. What was on offer then was techniques — memory, concentration, strategic reading, organising study.

2012–2016 · The book, and three countries

In 2012 Genio in 21 giorni was published by Sperling & Kupfer, part of the Mondadori group. It was a decisive step in reaching a wider public, though not the origin of the project: it brought to a general readership the tools that had been taught and tested for years.

It also opened the way abroad — the United States from 2012, Spain from 2013, then others. Every new country forced a useful separation: what genuinely belonged to the method, and what merely depended on Italian habits. Different languages, cultures and business structures turned out to be a formidable stress test.

2017–2021 · From a set of techniques to a method

In 2017 Genio Net was formally established: the business network built to coordinate training companies that already existed. The date does not mark the birth of the method. It marks the point at which a project grown through independent ventures decided to share quality standards, methodological development, research, internal training and a common direction.

The course changed in parallel. What had started as rapid-learning techniques broadened into a personalised study method. That required profiling, observation of real behaviour, metacognition, one-to-one tutoring, materials, digital tools and continuity after the classroom — and instructors trained to read a process, not only to explain a procedure.

The relationship with Italy's National Research Council began in 2018, through a contracted training activity, and later extended to applied research.

The part that was hard

The founders changed too: from young trainers to entrepreneurs building a business faster than they were building the structure to hold it.

What the group learned from that period is specific. Values have to become verifiable choices; responsibility needs rules; growth needs standards. The group chose to submit itself to external checks, and those are documented on the research and evidence pages.

2022–2026 · Institutions, and a name

In 2022, through Cultura Italiae, the work on learning, functional illiteracy and educational responsibility entered the drafting of the Manifesto per la Nuova Scuola, of which Massimo De Donno was the first signatory. The exchange with INDIRE began in that context, and qualified figures from the institute came to examine the method directly.

In 2024 the Telematic University IUL assessed Genio in 21 giorni as a complete training system — teachers, materials, session structure, digital tools, tutoring, personalisation and monitoring. By minute of 25 November 2024, formally communicated on 6 December, it granted the course its scientific patronage and recognised the possibility of awarding up to 12 university credits, six in PSI/08 and six in M-PED/01.

The same year the group published a new code of ethics and reorganised its board and first lines of management. In 2026 INDIRE asked for a methodological and pedagogical contribution to the design of a conversational agent for teacher training. And in 2026 Learnis was born — at the end of the process, not at the start of it.