C.NEXT is a S.p.A. Benefit Company established in December 2021 as the group leader of a system of innovation hubs distributed across the national territory which is aimed, on the one hand at the territories, for the development of economic regeneration projects through innovation, on the other at businesses, to stimulate and accompany them on their digital and energy transformation journeys.
C.NEXT is now supported by Fondazione Social Venture Giordano Dell’Amore (or “FSVGDA”) – the strategic and operational arm of Fondazione Cariplo in the field of impact investing – which has invested 250,000 euros in equity in the company.
Business model
Within the next 7 years C.NEXT aims to become the strategic and operational hub for over 1,000 innovative companies (start-ups and companies in different stages of development): the objective is to involve over 15,000 knowledge workers within a network of 12 Innovation Hub present in the national territory and one across the border, replicating a model capable of attracting a vast network of local stakeholders in different socio-economic contexts. The first hub of the system is already active and is based in Ivrea at the former Olivetti factories (Unesco heritage); other partnerships have been launched in various territories including: Novara (ADA – De Agostini Area), Arese (ex Alfa Romeo Area), Ascoli Piceno.
At the center of the development of C.NEXT is the NExT Innovation: an innovation transfer model successfully consolidated over the last five years at ComoNExT – Innovation Hub, the innovation hub based in the province of Como (Lomazzo) which constitutes the prototype of all the poles of the C.NEXT system that will be developed in the coming years. The NExT Innovation model brings together the skills of innovative companies adhering to the “collaboration pact” – startups, SMEs and large companies – in favor of companies that need to innovate products, processes and services, through the construction of work teams “tailored”. If the individual poles of the system are aimed in particular at SMEs, C.NEXT S.p.A. instead, it places itself at the service of big corporations to develop more complex and challenging projects.
NExT Innovation’s advisory activities refer to the themes of digital transformation and Industry 5.0, addressing the trends of technological innovation (data, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, etc.) and looking at the trajectories indicated by the SDG objectives.