UKE Start Centre - University Service for Regional Development

Universities have always been among the main places where innovative ideas and projects, developed in research laboratories, become opportunities for the entrepreneurial and industrial system, contributing significantly to the development of a country.

This important role has been established for some years through the definition of the “Third Mission Sector” for Universities, which assigns them the specific task of transferring knowledge for the growth of the social and productive system.

This is the context in which all the initiatives undertaken by Universities for the transfer and commercial diffusion of their inventions and the most modern technological services fall.

Among the tools that have established themselves most quickly is the university spin-off that allows the results of research and inventions to be actively and concretely transferred to the market.

A university spin-off or innovative start-up is therefore a capital company whose mission is to promote social development and the entrepreneurial valorization of new goods and services that arise from research activities within university laboratories.

In particular, Legislative Decree 297/1999 defined the scope of application of the new support and financial facilitation measures, indicating as beneficiaries all those companies that aim to exploit the results of their research in the entrepreneurial and industrial field. These companies can be formed by university professors and researchers, by those who participate in research doctorates, by the administrative staff of the universities and by the beneficiaries of research grants. In this way, a close collaboration is established between the two bodies, the university and the spin-off company, which makes it possible, among other things, to prevent any type of conflict of interest.

With Ministerial Decree 593/2000, which analytically regulates the methods of granting the benefits introduced by Legislative Decree 297/1999, Law 240/2010 and finally Ministerial Decree 168/2011, which define the criteria and requirements for the participation of university professors and researchers in spin-off companies, this important instrument was given concrete impetus.

In this sense, Kore has established the UKE START service in order to promote and support the creation of spin-off companies through its own regulation which will soon be approved by the competent Kore bodies.

The offices will provide all the assistance for the drafting of the business business project plans and for the subsequent formation of the companies which may include, among other things, the direct participation of the University itself.