In a country, Italy, where only 13% of startups come from scientific research, it becomes increasingly essential to work on technology transfer, or on the process of bringing together what is born in research laboratories and can become interesting for the market. . “In Italy we are faced with a constant paradox on these issues”, – says Claudia Pingue, Head of the Technology Transfer Fund of CDP Venture Capital, “because there are many internationally recognized excellences in our research. a large space of science-based solutions to be put in place to respond to the most pressing problems of our century, only, here is the paradox, we are the country that invests less in this type of results to produce market impact. Last year for example, Italian researchers were the most awarded at European level for the innovation potential of their inventions “.
Through the action of the Technology Transfer Fund, CDP Venture Capital intends to favor the creation of an integrated project to transfer inventions born in the laboratories in the right container. They are the National Technology Transfer Poles. To date, the first one, RoboIT, dedicated to robotics has been launched in Genoa, but others will soon arrive, to extend the intervention to further areas with high potential for innovation.
Claudia Pingue adds: “With the Technology Transfer Fund, which currently has an endowment of 275 million euros, we invest along the entire Technology Transfer chain through the creation of National Poles distributed throughout the territory: we do it in a focused way, working with startups that arise from scientific research. We enter into agreements with the main Universities and Research Centers to finance the initial stages of the life of startups and we continue to support them with specialized Venture Capital Funds to enhance the growth of the best companies on the market. system that leverages the most promising opportunities of Italian research to give birth to new generations of entrepreneurs and investors “.
To date, the market areas have been identified where research can make a difference: in addition to robotics, environmental sustainability and ecological transition, life sciences, food and agricultural sustainability and finally space.
In every sector the same type of approach is followed, the one that will serve to network. “We are present and support all the phases that allow the invention before being prototyped, patented, incorporated in a spin-off, tested on the market and commercialized internationally – explains Pingue -. We finance the entire development cycle with an end-to-end approach. end which is very useful for the researcher to understand and verify the implications and innovation potential of his inventions. “.
As in the case of the CDP National Accelerators Network, here too we want to support the birth of new companies by developing their potential but also accompanying them in the medium term. By supporting the passage of the idea, but also by creating an ecosystem that is then able to guarantee the life of these companies.
Hence the need after an initial intervention – that of the creation of National Technology Transfer Poles – to stimulate the creation of new venture capital funds: “through the logic of the Fund of Funds – Claudia Pingue specifies -, we support the birth of highly specialized in the same areas of intervention as the Poles, so that the spin-offs find an ecosystem of competent capitals that speak their language and can therefore further contribute to their national and international growth “.
Last October, the Technology Transfer Fund took another important step to support the birth of a new generation of deep tech investors: CDP Venture Capital and the European Investment Fund (EIF, part of the EIB group) signed an agreement to partnership that will make it possible to carry out co-investments up to a total of 260 million euros, aimed at accelerating access to the market for projects with a high technological content.
“The goal – comments Pingue – is to finance the creation of new venture capital funds specialized in frontier technologies. This important collaboration allows us to significantly increase the investable capital in the Italian startup ecosystem, to help managers to to be immediately operational on the market by shortening fund rising activities, and to have an opening to a network of international investors “.
Another milestone, the leverage effect generated by RoboIT, the National Robotics Technology Transfer Center. “It is a project in which we have already invested 40 million – says Pingue -. These will start working shortly with the first investments within the year and have already generated an estimated overall leverage effect of over 100 million euros which over the next 4 years they will contribute to the birth of more than 50 new companies specialized in robotics technologies and applications “.
Giorgio Metta is scientific director of the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa which acts as a central hub for all RoboIT activities. “With RoboIT we favor the increase of the technological readiness index of robotics projects that come from the world of research. To become products, to activate further investments they must be ready, they must have suitable technological development. Before, this process was much more complicated. This pole of robotics is placed as an investment target right in the middle and therefore it is very important because it connects the researcher with the business world “.
Together with the Italian Institute of Technology of Genoa, in the Polo there are also the University of Naples Federico II, the University of Verona, and the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna of Pisa, among the major specialized research centers in Italy in the field. But also investment holding companies and specialized venture capital funds.
“We offer companies the know-how – mechanical design, artificial intelligence, the ability to develop software, algorithms, to develop custom solutions – from robot design to artificial intelligence algorithms to make these machines more and more flexible. At the moment we are in the first phase of scouting for the initial part of the ideas, there will be a first proof of concept, for a first funding. An incubator will host these projects right away. After that there will be the second phase of real seed investment. So, from an idea that is evaluated as working for the market, we build the company that will make it. Let’s say that with this start the chances of success are excellent for playing the game with the right means “concludes Professor Metta.
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