Luca Nervo

Biography

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Luca Nervo is a PhD candidate at the Department of Management and Production Engineering (DIGEP) at Politecnico di Torino, where he obtained his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Management Engineering, specializing in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship.
His research lies at the intersection of entrepreneurship and innovation, with a focus on the valorization of scientific research and the processes through which Research-Based Inventions (RBIs) are transformed into market-ready innovations and academic spin-offs. In particular, his work explores the mechanisms and processes that enable scientist-entrepreneurs to commercialize their discoveries, with a specific focus on Proof-of-Concept (PoC) programs and their role in bridging the gap between academic research and market applications.

Research Statement

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RBIs are early-stage scientific and technological outputs for which industrial relevance and market potential are often difficult to assess, making it hard to translate a scientific discovery into a viable application. PoC programs have become a key tool for supporting this transition, requiring scientists to engage in entrepreneurial experimentation rather than following a purely linear technology transfer process. This is particularly relevant for science-based inventions, which tend to face higher technological and market uncertainty, longer development times, and higher failure rates.
While the effectiveness of PoC programs has mainly been studied at the national or organizational level, little is known about what happens at the project level, the actions, processes, and learning dynamics scientists actually go through. The research addresses this gap by studying the microfoundations of science valorization through PoCs, using them as a natural experimental setting to observe early-stage commercialization dynamics.
The work will be carried out within the research team at DIGEP, drawing on access to a database of PoC projects developed across major Italian universities, project-level data on inventions, inventors, and patents, and documentation of specific PoC projects.
Building on these resources, the research will investigate the learning processes, team configurations, and strategic actions of academic researchers to understand how these shape the transition from discovery to venture creation. It will compare the valorization trajectories of science-based and engineering-based inventions, developing case studies based on real PoC projects in the natural and physical sciences. The analysis will also examine how participation in PoC programs contributes to the development of entrepreneurial capabilities among scientists, including its effect on spinoff creation and career paths, and how PoCs function as structured learning environments for opportunity discovery and market validation, beyond their role as a funding instrument. A further aspect concerns the role of external networks and partners: the research will assess how the involvement of industry actors and other stakeholders around PoC projects contribute to the commercialization of research-based inventions. Based on this evidence, the research will develop recommendations for policymakers and university administrators on how to design PoC programs, situating the findings within broader comparisons across research and institutional contexts.
The main empirical setting will be Italian universities, with particular attention to Politecnico di Torino, combining secondary data collection with interviews and surveys to build detailed case studies of selected PoC projects, considering both the specific dynamics of individual projects and their broader network of relations.

Complementary Activities

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The research path includes participation in international conferences to present and discuss ongoing research findings, attendance at courses offered by other universities to strengthen methodological and theoretical skills relevant to the project, and a research period abroad at a partner university.