The annual International Association of Science Parks and Areas of Innovation (IASP) conference will be held in Russia for the first time next week, and it will be bigger than it’s ever been.
Representatives of science parks and innovation centres from all over the world will congregate in Moscow for four days beginning September 19 to discuss ideas, forge contacts and watch presentations by innovative companies. With at least 1,600 people attending from about 70 different countries, this year’s IASP event has smashed records before it has even begun, according to Renat Batyrov, chairman of the IASP 2016 Moscow executive committee and director of Skolkovo’s Technopark, one of the three hosts of the event.
The Skolkovo innovation centre is one of three hosts of the four-day IASP conference. Photo: Sk.ru.
“This is a world record for this conference, it has never seen more than 1,000 participants before,” Batyrov said at a press conference on Thursday. More than a thousand meetings have been arranged via the event’s “matchmaking system,” which allows participants to schedule meetings with other attendees in advance, he added.
More than half the participants are foreign, coming from countries including China, Australia, the U.S., Turkey, Italy, Iran, Mexico and South Korea. There will also be representatives of technoparks in Russia’s regions, including Innopolis in Russia’s republic of Tatarstan.
The event, subtitled “The Global Mind: Linking Innovation Communities for Internationalization, Sustainability and Growth,” is aimed at helping attendees to find new partners, investors and markets. It will take place at three different venues, with the Skolkovo innovation centre hosting events on the first day, followed by two days of events at the World Trade Centre in central Moscow. On the final day – September 22 – events will move to the Science Park at Moscow State University (MSU).
IASP Moscow is supported by the federal and city governments, and will be attended by officials including Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin.
The annual conference of IASP, a non-governmental organization that has special consultative status within the economic and social council of the UN, is being held this year for the 33rd time.
“It’s the first time that the international IASP conference will be held in Russia, where science parks and innovative development zones are growing rapidly,” said Jean-Francois Balducchi, IASP’s president.
Renat Batyrov, director of Skolkovo's Technopark. Photo: Sk.ru.
“The importance of internationalization is constantly rising so at this conference we’ll be talking about the global mind and its huge importance for innovative communities in the context of growth and sustainability.”
IASP comprises technoparks from 73 countries, including 34 Russian ones – 26 of which are in Moscow.
“At the start of 2015, there were just five technoparks in the city, and now there are 26,” Vladimir Dozhdyov, head of investment activity for City Hall’s science, industrial policy and entrepreneurship department, said at a televised meeting this week.
“That’s more than 1.5 million square metres of specialized premises, nearly 1,350 hi-tech companies, and nearly 32,000 highly paid jobs,” he said.
“The upcoming conference is a hugely important event for these Moscow facilities, and offers them the opportunity to hone their international activities, penetrate global markets and broaden their contacts with colleagues from other countries.”
Technopark status offers a range of perks to hi-tech companies, including a discount on profit tax, property tax breaks and subsidies for the development of infrastructure.
“At this stage of the development of the innovative ecosystem in Russia, the issue of creating efficient technoparks is especially relevant: we need to turn empty buildings and laboratories into centres of attraction for science and technology,” said Skolkovo’s Batyrov.
“Technoparks should first of all help startups commercialize their projects and bring them to international markets.”
On the first day of the event, attendees can take part in a conference with a difference: as part of a session devoted to cities as innovative centres, participants will tour the infrastructure of the Skolkovo innovation centre, which has been built from scratch on a site on the outskirts of Moscow. The urban conference session is devoted to effective technologies and strategies for creating innovation cities around the world.
“This is the first attempt to gather at Skolkovo people involved in urban and territorial development,” says Elena Zelentsova, the Skolkovo Foundation’s vice president for the development of the urban environment.
“We believe a meeting of two themes will be very productive. Any successful city has to be innovative. All around the world, centres of innovation, technoparks and zones of innovative development are growing, and we think it is logical if technology for managing the cities of the future is developed at these centres of innovation. That is the focus of our urban conference.”
The conference’s speakers will include Andrei Sharonov, rector of the Skolkovo school of management (a separate entity to the Skolkovo Foundation), and Sergei Kapkov, head of a centre focusing on urban development within the economics faculty of MSU, and the man credited with transforming Moscow’s Gorky Park into a modern urban space during his time as the head of Moscow’s culture department.
Other events held within the IASP conference include a competition to select the 50 best startups, as well as a robotics and virtual reality exhibition, which will be held on September 20.
For more information and a full programme, visit the IASP world conference website.