This chapter focuses on one crucial element of post-war Italian sociology: extra-academic research centers . These institutes were venues for training young sociologists, creating scholarly and political networks, and promoting the discipline and its institutionalization. After a survey of major research centers, the chapter focuses on three cases: the Centro nazionale di prevenzione e difesa sociale in Milan, a research center with close relations to the political establishment; the Associazione il Mulino in Bologna, a cultural association, which created an intellectual infrastructure for the discipline; and the Ufficio Relazioni Sociali of the very large Olivetti enterprise in Ivrea, which framed sociological research as an element in a wider political–cultural project of social reform.