Renascence is an early-stage company incubator and a business accelerator that operates within the EDHEC Business School Campus in Nice, in synergy with the Theseus-EDHEC MBA programme.  It is a broker that puts investors and innovative and creative minds in touch with eachother.

EDHEC is the only business school in France that has an enterprise incubator and business accelerator.  Implanted on the Nice campus, Renascence is the place where academia, investors, entrepreneurs and ideas converge to spark creativity and business.

A multifunctional organization

Renascence is above all a business Incubator.  It brings entrepreneurs and investors together.  It helps people with innovative ideas in the early stage of the creation of their company, by providing them with financing, consulting, marketing and business plans and industrial intelligence.  There are even cases where Renascence provides ideas to high-potential individuals.

Renascence is also a business accelerator.  In this case it helps companies that have already been through the first stage and already have a product, customers and cash flow.  What Renascence does in this stage is to help entrepreneurs with high profile ideas to raise the needed capital for the expansion of their business by putting them in touch with venture capitalists.  It also helps on a management level and with the creation of a network in the industry.

Of course putting a venture capitalist in the company means that a big part of the company goes away from the hands of the entrepreneur, but as the Director of Renascence, Mr. Ovidio Maiuri, says: It is better to have 5% of a big company, than 100% of nothing.

For Renascence, investments are an art form.  Renascence works closely with active venture capitalists. It helps them find the best investments and manage them.  It provides more information about the market than can be provided by individual investors. . Renascence regularly monitors the development of the venture capitalists investments and helps them deal with risk efficiently.

However Renascence is also about education. It sets course projects targeting specific knowledge, using academics and professionals from financial institutions and the hi-tech industry, people with extensive records of successful academic and professional careers. It provides special training for business incubators across Europe, technology parks and governmental institutions.

Renascence and EDHEC Business School have a win-win partnership. By continuously evaluating technologies and proposals across the continent it helps EDHEC create strong links with think-tanks, research centers and investors.  It also helps students keen to apply what they learn in classrooms but who don't have first-hand experience.  Renascence benefits from the skills and talents of EDHEC's professors, students and practitioners with strong academic background.

Renascence's founder and director, Ovidio Maiuri, has obtained a Master in International Business from the University of Australia in Adelaide, a PhD from the University of Oxford in Telecommunication Engineering and the Theseus-EDHEC MBA. He has 12 years of experience in telecommunications in major companies.  Currently he shares his time between Renascence and his academic obligations (as lecturer, tutor, and visiting professor in Oxford University and in RPI New York).  He also lectures and coordinates the visiting professors and the Innovation and Creativity Workshop of the Theseus-EDHEC MBA programme.