Anyone who is young, has an idea and feels like a born entrepreneur has a new opportunity, that of developing their talent in the most suitable place: the "G-Factor" of the Golinelli Foundation. This is the new business "incubator-accelerator" which will find its home in an area of 5 thousand square meters under construction next to the factory in via Nanni Costa in Bologna and which will be inaugurated in the first months of 2019.
With this work, the citadel of knowledge and culture will become a real city, inhabited by those who want to do things and throbbing with education, art, science and business, over a total area of 14 m2018. To enter this "talent" you must participate and win the international tender "Call for Ideas &Start-up First Edition XNUMX Life Science Innovation", which can be downloaded from today on the foundation's website.
Up for grabs is the future and one million euros to make it happen. The best ten teams of researchers and students in the "life science" sector will win, so dear to those who made all this possible: the philanthropist entrepreneur Marino Golinelli. The aim is to encourage the integration between research, industry and the market, putting young people, their ideas and scientific and technological research at the centre.
Moving from castles in the air to products, to financing, accompanying the winners in the realization of a dream, which makes them and the society in which they live grow. For those who think they have a winning idea in the pharma and biotech, medtech, nutraceutical, bioinformatics and bioengineering sectors, now is the time to step forward. The call is divided into two "lines": senior and junior.
The first is dedicated to researchers, individually or in teams - belonging to public and private entities - newco, spinoffs and innovative startups. The second to students, graduates, doctorates, individually or in teams, newco and start-ups that have developed innovative ideas, products or processes. For the first line there are 500 euros in cash or rather in "convertible notes", a sort of loan that can become a share in a company.
To these funds must be added between 50 and 200 euros in services. There will be 5 senior teams selected and they must include at least one member under the age of 40. The program lasts approximately 9 months. It will be residential for between 5 weeks and 3 months, and the winners will essentially also find accommodation.
The junior line offers 250 euros in convertible notes and 200 euros in services, and half of the members of each group (the chosen teams will always be five) must be under 35 years of age. All applications must be received by 11 December and their evaluation will be entrusted to a commission made up of prominent exponents in the fields of innovation, research and business.
In this way, the Foundation is celebrating its first 30 years of life, carrying forward a commitment it made with "Opus 2065", the visionary plan for the next 50 years. “At a time when development, ideas and models seem to be in crisis – says the president Andrea Zanotti – we want to open up a new path. Our project has a national, indeed international, dimension, but it also offers Bologna the opportunity to rediscover its most authentic vocation, as a place of study and development”.
For three years now, the physical location of the foundation's activities has been in the Opificio, a space for imagination and experimentation in an industrial and peripheral area of Bologna, which since its opening has already exceeded 300.000 visitors and half a million total hours of training provided.
It is a context that represents a point of contamination between different activities and realities: from the training and education of pre-school, school and post-school age children, to research and sustainability projects for new business ideas. With this new step, Opificio presents itself to the international community as one of the most important reference centers for innovation at European level, an integrated ecosystem, unique in Italy, with all the phases of a complex and interconnected supply chain: education, training, research , technology transfer, incubation, acceleration and private equity/venture capital, in a system open to converging development trajectories.
To make this leap, the Foundation has also transformed itself "into a sort of holding company for philanthropic activities - explains the director Antonio Danieli - which controls the Eureka Trust, G Factor, and G Lab srl". With all that this entails and which will be better understood in the coming months.
