Conor Lenihan’s involvement with Skolkovo came about because of a chance meeting – in the Vatican.
The former Irish economy and innovation minister was on a trip to Rome in April 2011. It was there that he met Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, who had brought his collection of Faberge eggs for display in a Vatican museum.
After a series of discussions, Vekselberg, president of the Skolkovo Foundation, invited Lenihan to work in Moscow “in the area of persuading international companies to invest and establish research and development teams at Skolkovo,” Lenihan said in an interview in Moscow last week.
Hired initially as a senior adviser, Lenihan, 49, later took up a post as vice president in charge of the “key partners” team of the foundation, which deals exclusively with large international companies locating their research and development operations at Skolkovo.
More than 20 such companies have already signed contracts or preliminary agreements expressing their interest in Skolkovo, Lenihan said. The attraction for global firms is the combination of Russian scientific and engineering talent, market access and the chance to join a large, well-financed government project.
A departure from politics
Lenihan, a former journalist and politician, served as a member of the Irish parliament for the centerright Fianna Fail party from 1997 to 2011.
His resume includes stints as Ireland’s minister of state for overseas development and human rights, minister for integration policy, and minister of science, technology, innovation and natural resources.
But Lenihan left politics after his party lost the election last year, as voters blamed the ruling Fianna Fail for the end of the “Celtic Tiger” success story of the Irish economy. In 2007-08, Ireland was hit particularly hard by the collapse of the real estate and finance bubble, and now the country has severe problems with ballooning unemployment and falling GDP.
Like many of his compatriots, Lenihan found himself going abroad.
An applied education
Skolkovo was a chance to start a different life experience, Lenihan said, and to get an insight on Russia, whose history, culture and language he had studied as a university student in Dublin.
“What excited me most at Skolkovo was the scale of the project and the fact that authorities here have fully supported it with resources, finance, and even actual location, the 700 acres,” Lenihan said.
“Responding to external and internal critics, I used to say that the ability of the Russian state apparatus to mobilize itself was very impressive,” he said, “but more now, that I can tell investors that the 2014 G8 summit will be held at Skolkovo.”
The Irish experience
Lenihan knows what it takes to build “a knowledge economy,” as he called it, because Ireland gained a reputation of successfully attracting investments across all hightech categories.
“About 11 years ago, we established an agency called the Science Foundation Ireland, with an idea to bring our scientific research to such a level that it could be subject and stand up to international peer group analysis and comparison,” Lenihan said.
Part of the success, he said, was that the Irish government consciously chose to upgrade scientific infrastructure 10 to 12 years ago.
Before that, Lenihan recalled, “we had a reputation of welcoming investments, but we didn’t have a reputation of excellence in relation to research and development.”
But on the eve of the 21st century, global corporations had their eye on Ireland.
The world comes knocking
The majority of investment after the downturn of the Irish economy in the 1980s came from multinationals, Lenihan said.
Google, which chose to open its European headquarters in Ireland in 2003, provided an important indication that the country was on the right track.
“Google’s investment was hugely important,” Lenihan said. “It was a confirmation of a trend which had already been there.” Soon afterward, he found himself at the center of another investment coup: to get LinkedIn to come to Ireland.
Repatriation success stories
But global corporations were only part of that Irish success. The real challenge was to bring back the skilled Irish natives who had left the country during the downturn.
“We in Ireland had the same issue as Russia did back in the 1990s, when thousands of skilled people, graduates in business and technology, left the country through emigration because there was nothing happening in Ireland,” Lenihan said.
Those people, who returned to Ireland 10 to 20 years after recession, came back with more experience in global standards and business.
“So what we saw at first as a terrible disadvantage for our country, after we made the investment climate right, has turned into an asset bonus,” Lenihan said.
The right environment
Creating a strong investment climate and attracting large global businesses is key to attracting native talent back, and Lenihan said he was sure it would happen in 10 to 15 years in Russia, as soon as people saw opportunities here.
He recalled a conversation with Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers and some of his colleagues, who told Lenihan that 700 Russians were working for the company: in Silicon Valley.
Now, however, Cisco is opening a research and development center at Skolkovo.
“Hopefully, with projects like Skolkovo, we’ll help to give a future to young Russian scientists and researchers who wish to make a career and do well in Russia, and not be forced to leave their country because there wasn’t room for their talent,” Lenihan said.
Source: themoscownews.com