The project CHIMERA brought a patented innovation from a scientific research laboratory at Politecnico di Milano, where it was born, up to its industrial implementation and validation. This led to the foundation of a start-up company (called NIREOS, see www.nireos.com) accredited as spin-off from the same University, after an acceleration program assisted by its partner PoliHUB, a leading start-up incubator. PoliHUB helped CHIMERA team to identify the market needs, to design the best market strategy and to set up a suitable implementation plan.
As it often happens in these cases, the initial idea (related to the realization of a spectropolarimeter for the identification of chiral molecules) turned out not to be suitable for the market. This was mainly due to a lack of sensitivity intrinsic in the measurement technique, not acceptable by the customers, irrespective of all the other benefits our product could offer with respect to other commercially available ones (such as lower price, reduced dimensions, shorter measurement time, increased information content…). Therefore, the strategy changed along the course of the CHIMERA project. This was in line with the so-called “pivot” core concept of the most-recent theories based on the “Lean Startup” model: a structured course correction designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product and the related business model. The outcome was to employ the very same technology for a different purpose: the realization of an ultra-broadband spectrometer, covering the entire spectrum of the light from the visible to the near-infrared and medium-infrared regions, up to almost 5-microns wavelength. This product has a clear competitive advantage over grating-based spectrometers, as it does not require a multi-channel detector, very expensive in the infrared region. It also fills the gap between the popular frequency-domain visible/near-infrared spectrometers and the time-domain FTIR spectrometers, based on a rather bulky and delicate interferometer, not suitable for harsh environments such as those found in the industrial sector e.g. in production lines for quality control.
In conclusion, CHIMERA project was very successful, as it filled the gap between basic research and industrial innovation. The establishment of a start-up in Milan area (Italy) to commercialize the technology developed under the CHIMERA project will serve as a stimulus for the economy of the region, generating new job positions for both highly-educated professionals (engineers and managers) and lower-educated professionals (manufacturers). Such products are characterized by a high level of manufacturing intensity that will contribute to relocate manufacturing in Italy, a region that particularly suffered from the recent economic crisis and tended to transfer the activities in Eastern Europe and Asia.
