M2P 2023

IS31 - Mathpreneurs - How math can become the core asset of new startups, generate jobs and transform the economy

Organized by: E. Deluchi (POLIHUB, Italy), N. Rodriguez (POLIHUB, Italy) and A. Barbara (Politecnico Di Milano, Italy)
Most scientific discoveries, patents and brilliant ideas embed the potential to address problems that are affecting life, economy, society or to create new opportunities for people, companies, and institutions. But inventing “new stuff” is not sufficient. The real challenge is to transform them in innovations that can reach the market and be videly adopted, unleashing all the potential they contain. This is (transforming inventions into innovations) a particularly difficult task especially in the high/deep tech space for two main reasons: a) inventors are usually researchers and scientists that have little familiarity with business and entrepreneurial practices and b) deep tech innovations can often address the needs of multiple markets, making difficult the identification of the most promising (or easier to tackle) ones. At PoliHub, the Innovation Park and startup accelerator of Politecnico di Milano, we have developed methodologies and programs designed to address both challenges: helping inventors of high/deep tech innovations in discovering their entrepreneurial talent and in identifying the beachhead markets for their technologies. During the session PoliHub will provide an insight about their approach to Tech Transfer and will coordinate the dialogue with 3/4 entrepreneurs that, starting from their research in mathematics, have created successful startups.