ESTECO, the first spin-off of the University of Trieste, was born years ago from the initiative of three engineers: Carlo Poloni, Enrico Nobile and Luka Onesti. Today, it is a strong multinational player in the engineering software market with customers such as Ford, Ferrari, Hyundai, Honda, Jaguar Land Rover, Stellantis, Toyota and has six locations worldwide: Trieste and Turin, Novi (Michigan), Pune (India), Nuremberg and London. 

Among the industrial sectors served, the automotive sector is the main one, followed by the aerospace sector.

We asked Carlo Poloni, President of ESTECO, to tell us how this extraordinary entrepreneurial adventure was born.

How does a successful spin-off like ESTECO come about?

Everything comes from a good idea, but also from the right mix of meetings, luck and passion. ESTECO was founded in 1999, but its history begins a little earlier, with a European research project in which I took part as a researcher at the University of Trieste. With me Enrico Nobile, who was and still is a professor of our University, and Luka Onesti, one of Enrico’s students at the time stationed at the University of Bergen for a scholarship. The project, which obviously involved other academic and industrial partners, revolved around a pioneering concept: Multi-objective optimisation coupled with multidisciplinary simulation. When the project ended, in 1998, we had obtained a software of which I, Enrico and Luka recognised the commercial potential and to which the EU itself asked to give an industrial follow-up. Searching and finding the capital to acquire its intellectual property was not easy, but this is how the first spin-off of the University of Trieste was born.

What is the added value of being a university spin-off?

Fortunately, in those years there was a new national legislation that allowed university researchers to found spin-offs. This gave us a regulatory framework to be able to move in symbiosis with the University of Trieste. Over the years, we have always kept more alive than ever the contact with the academy and research through projects funded by third parties, but also through initiatives related to teaching, such as courses, theses, scholarships and doctorates. This is crucial to continue to grow and ‘learn’ as a company by recruiting new staff and returning training and experience.

How could the business world work more effectively with the university world?

The most erroneous way for the company is to ask the university for immediate solutions to contingent problems. It is necessary to take a long-term view and look for a return, not so much in economic terms, but rather in terms of method and human resources. But even the academic world must do its part and understand that the distorted perspective of the spasmodic research of publication, unfortunately imposed by the research evaluation metrics, is diametrically opposed to what the company seeks. Quoting a sentence from Michellone, former head of the FIAT Research Centre: let us remember that publication is only a means of dissemination while the aim must be the creation and maintenance of knowledge.

What advice would you give to future young entrepreneurs?

This is a very difficult question. I would suggest to only become an entrepreneur when a need has been identified whose satisfaction corresponds to an objective value. Only in this way will the resulting undertaking be able to survive. Again, confusing the means (financing) with the purpose (the objectives of the undertaking) can lead to large distortions.