An independent study of effectiveness of state development institutions, among them the Skolkovo Foundation, Rosnano, VEB bank and the Russian Venture Company was done on the Skolkovo Innovation City premises.
Results of the study will be announced at the Open Innovations Forum 2012, which will take place in Moscow on October 31 - November 3 this year. The format of an open to all Skolkovo residents, media and public discussion of interim results suited best.
“It does not happen too often that leaders of all development institutions get together in one place to discuss publicly, what they do and how they interact with each other,” the session moderator Sergei Guryev, rector of the New Economic School said at the opening of the event,”the session moderator Sergei Guryev, rector of the New Economic School
“It does not happen too often that leaders of all development institutions get together in one place to discuss publicly, what they do and how they interact with each other,” the session moderator Sergei Guryev, rector of the New Economic School said at the opening of the event,”
the session moderator Sergei Guryev, rector of the New Economic School
Discussion turned to be quite open and interesting, with a wide range of pressing problems on the table. Thus, the general director of one of Skolkovo’s residents, Workle, quite commercialized and well known company in Russia, addressed right from the conference hall in person Viktor Vekselberg. He appealed to the Skolkovo’s president with a request to cut down numerous requirements of financial reporting on grants spending.
На “The Foundation grows and studies together with you, so do you, together with us. And experience of each project (and Workle is one of successful Skolkovo’s projects), facilitates creation of a unified system. We make a project, which has no analogy in Russia, and we have no source to copy any experience,” Vitkor Vekselberg’s answered.
«You are one of the firsts, and believe me, our goal is to help you as much as we can. The principle, which we follow: if you are successful, so we are successful as well. Therefore we are quite interested to create more comfortable and constructive eco-system,” Viktor Vekselberg
«You are one of the firsts, and believe me, our goal is to help you as much as we can. The principle, which we follow: if you are successful, so we are successful as well. Therefore we are quite interested to create more comfortable and constructive eco-system,”
As it was mentioned by some leaders of development institutes, it will take time to create an eco-system, which will be attractive for venture investments. The eco-system will be appearing evolutionary and sometimes it takes years to get it. Therefore the word “patience” has to be in a vocabulary of state officials in charge of supervision of this process.
Patricia Freitas, director of the Brazilian governmental INOVAR program, told the audience that their fund saw first private co-investors only six years after the start of the program. Freitas is a quite well-known person in the venture business, who forms part of a key multinational think-tank on venture business, a research group, chaired by a Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner.
The session moderator, Sergey Guriev, on some point noted that the session turned into some kind of reports of organizations, on the other hand, he said, these reports allow to see dynamics, essential to analyze effectiveness of work of state development institutions.
Viktor Vekselberg (Skolkovo), Anatoly Chubais (Rosnano), Igor Agamirzyan (RVC), Sergei Polyakov (the Foundation of assistance to small enterprises), Vladimir Dmitryev, (VEB chairman) – all reported on preliminary results.
“I consider the RVC as a market instrument to resolve goals, set by our main stakeholder, the state, we act in its interests, which are development of the entire country and all national economy,” Agamirzyan of RVC said. He believes that one of the main results of his activity lies in an increase in professionalism of the innovation market participants.
At the same time, he said, on the background of increasing number of projects, one problem is fully clear: too few truly breakthrough projects.
Yet another challenge is an industrial disproportion: IT remains the most rapidly developing startup segment, particularly when it comes to E-commerce. At that quite many number of projects are clones from global markets. As Agamirzyan said, he doesn’t trust in an “effective competition between Ozon and Amazon”. As he said, 25 percent of investments channel into Biotech, other 25 percent go to all other types of startup projects.
Viktor Vekselberg named among most practical achievements of Skolkovo investments into startups, which amounted in 2012 more than one billion rubles ($33.3 million). “Is it a lot or nothing, he asked the audience? Well, it’s twice more than last year, on the background of decreasing actgivity in venture investments,” he said.
As he noticed, one of Skolkovo achievements is that so called innovation lifts do work in Russia. And on regional level the project has inspired the initiative in many parts of the country. Although, to his mind, it’s too early today to spread the Skolkovo model all over the country, as there is no final understanding if the project has already managed to gather the critical mass of intellectual capital. “If these efforts were dispersed, we won’t get transformation of quantity into quality,” Viktor Vekselberg said.
Photo album of the event