NOI – Nuovi Orientamenti di Impresa (New Business Orientations) is a free incubation programme promoted by the Laboratorio Aperto dei Chiostri di San Pietro in Reggio Emilia, funded through European regional funds of the Emilia-Romagna Region in collaboration with the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, Fondazione REI, and the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. Its objective is to accompany, grow, and establish ten responsible new ventures that are economically solid and capable of generating positive social, cultural, and environmental impact in their local territories.

The programme selected startups and business ideas active in the fields of social innovation, welfare, culture, digital transformation, and ecological transition, offering each team advanced training, accompaniment, and mentoring services.

Polifactory’s contribution was structured around three main moments. The first was participation in the programme Kick-Off on 10 January 2025 at the Laboratorio Aperto, where the research group presented its methodological approach to the ten selected startups.

The second was a participatory design training workshop held on-site on 7 March 2025, with particular attention to the social dimensions of the incubated ventures. The workshop introduced participatory methods and tools applied to service design and prototyping — from stakeholder mapping to co-design with end users, through to rapid prototyping of service concepts. All training materials were specifically designed and developed for the participating startups.

The third component was a cycle of individual mentorship sessions (1-to-1) addressed to the programme’s startups, covering topics including service prototyping, business model validation, and the application of participatory design tools to each startup’s specific context.

The ten ventures supported through the programme operate across a wide range of fields — from digital wellbeing for families and fintech platforms for employee welfare, to circular economy for the cultural sector, sustainable tourism in the Emilian territory, AI tools for mental health professionals, and social proximity apps. The diversity of the portfolio reflects NOI’s broad mandate: to identify responsible entrepreneurship across all sectors where innovation can produce collective impact.

The programme concluded on 3 December 2025 with a public Demo Day at the Chiostri di San Pietro, where the startups presented their projects to investors, stakeholders, and the local community.