In the frameworks of the year of cooperation between the Netherlands and Russia a meeting yesterday in Saint-Petersburg was held between the President of Russia Vladimir Putin and the Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte (this European country has the status of an “honourable guest” at SPIEF), as well as the most large-scale business meeting at Skolkovo Technpark between residents and top management of the Foundation and colleagues from the Netherlands.
The delegation of represetatives who visited Skolkovo Technopark yesterday, on June 19, 2013, included Bertholt Leeftink, Deputy Minister of Economics and Innovations of the Netherlands, General Director of the Department of Industries and Innovations, as well as representatives of business and academic circles, state institutions and research centers.
According to Anna Nikina, organizer of the event and head of development of international partnerships at the Skolkovo Foundation, the visit had a targeted, and completely practical character. «Interest for the event is very high. The meeting gathered more than hundred participants, among them startups of Skolkovo ecosystem (about 70% of Russian participants). “Round tables and discussions on IT, biomedicine, healthcare and life science were organized in the frameworks of the forum, covering three Skolkovo clusters – IT, Biomedical and Nuclear Technologies”, said Anna Nikina.
“The key element of the programme were individual negotiations prepared and organized in advance between the Russian and Dutch participants according to their requests”, said Nikina. Deputy General Director of TPS Sergey Yezhov underlined in his introductory words that the Russian-Dutch year means for Skolkovo in the first place that parties started to accomplish agreements achieved earlier (during the visit of the President of the Skolkovo Foundation, Viktor Vekselberg, to the Netherlands), including on cooperation with the Dutch university in the sector of Life Sciences. Meetings in this B2B format will stimulate “the achievement of practical results important for our country”, marked Sergey Yezhov, who had invited the Dutch colleagues for cooperation with Skolkovo.
Participating in the plenary session and round tables on IT and Life Science as a speaker was Executive Director of the Nuclear Technologies cluster Denis Kovalevich who talked about cooperation with the Dutch giant ASML (world leader in production of photolithographic machines for microelectronics) for the creation of sources of ultra-short emission. Mats Nordlund, Skoltech VP for research also gave a speech at the plenary session.
During the round table on life science guests from the Netherlands were able to communicate with Marek Dziky, General Director of the Skolkovo Biomedical cluster, as well as Nikolay Suyetin, Director for science in IT cluster.
From the Dutch side, Mr. Leeftink underlined, based on the results of the meeting and a visit to the Foundation (he also visited the Hypercube), that he was very impressed with the progress which Skolkovo project had achieved. “Today we defined together the wide range of possibilities for cooperation in the sphere of R&D in such directions as healthcare and biomedicine, as well as IT, which are priority directions for the Netherlands. Cooperation with the Skolkovo companies and with Skoltech is also possible in such spheres as telemedicine, computer science, processing super-massive data.”
Leeftink also highlighted that the Netherlands became the fifth country in the global rating of the most competitive countriea, having ascended from the 10th place in a short period. The country plans to firmly consolidate its position among the top 5 of world leaders in high technologies. “Alhough the Netherlands was also hit as anyone else by the world economic crisis in 2007-2009, due to powerful investments in R&D we managed to provide the future economic growth”, said General Director of the Department of Industries and Innovations of the Ministry of Economical Development of the Netherlands.
Anton Yefimov, resident of the Foundation, General Director of “Snotra” (scanning probe crynanotomography, a new 3D method for nano-structure analysis) shared his impressions of the meeting:
“We hope to meet potential customers here as well as scientific partners from Holland, where there is a powerful scientific base in our segment. As a result I had several very useful meetings and made contacts which, I hope, will bring results in future. We already have experience of joint work with the Technical University of Eindhoven, we continue this work and search for partners. The thing is that in the amount of achievements in microscopy, the Netherlands are traditionally the leaders in the world. Let’s not forget that the first microscope was made in Holland and the first commercial electronic microscope was also made there. We hope that someone there will have interest in our technology – there are no direct analogues in the world.”
Alexey Lavrin, project manager at “Plazma-Pro” (Foundation resident): “It was always interesting for us to communicate with foreign partners from whom we could hear an original point of view concerning our projects: they have their own understanding of business, their own peculiarities. I represent a project on plasma-chemical purification of water. In Holland there is a powerful water purification sector. At this event in Skolkovo Technopark I managed to present the projects with a big advantage. People are ready to discuss cooperation, are easy to get in touch with, there is already a prospect and I evaluate it positively. It is still early to talk about more concrete things but I see results of today’s meeting as promising.”
And here is the opinion of the Dutch side. Hendrik Halbe, Managing Director of Entrepreneurship Center at the Erasmus University Rotterdam: “I was very interested to see how ecosystem of innovation economics is formed in Russia and learn what ways there are to enter Russian market. Today I heard how Skolkovo can help in this. At home in Rotterdam I am engaged in approximately the same project which has been developed at the university and today I didn’t only get insight but also contacts both with Russians and my fellow countrymen who came with the delegation which are important for me.”
Patrick Zercnik, MD, University Clinic St. Radboud:
“We were interested in a quite concrete question concerning R&D in the sphere of data processing and post-processing of diagnostic studies in the form of MRT, ultra sound. Our aim is to create a Russian base for business where it would be possible to create technologies for implementation in the Russian market. We think of developing business from Russia and expect support from Skolkovo in the sphere of pharmaceuticals business and support in formal registration of business here. If we want to develop business in Russia we must create a basis here of course: doing business in Russia from the Netherlands is much more difficult,” said Mr. Zamecnik.