The Skolkovo Foundation was set up in 2010 to change the perception of Russia from an old mineral-export country to a new investor-friendly economy. For three years its progress has been patchy, but all that may now be changing
Every city in the world wants to be the coolest on the planet. Spectacles such as the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics are usually conduits for making this happen; London last year is one obvious example.
Previous Olympic cities such as Vancouver, Beijing, Barcelona and Seoul have also benefited from such exposure. Even the Norwegian city of Lillehammer, home to the 1994 Winter Olympics, was immortalised in a BBC TV programme that starred Sopranos legend Steve Van Zandt.
The forthcoming 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2018 World Cup means that Russia is the next country that has the opportunity to showcase itself to the world. Rather like London and all cities after it, Moscow is trying to augment this by creating a tech hub that will attract foreign investment, entrepreneurs and innovative startups.
ShutterstockIn 2009 the creation of the Skolkovo Foundation was announced by then President Medvedev and was founded the next year. The not-for-profit organisation would oversee a huge scientific city that would be home to 25,000 people and one where startups would be fast-tracked to commercial viability.
The organisation would also attempt to bring Moscow into the world of global academia. Russia doesn't have a single university in the world's Top 200 and Skolkovo reportedly paid MIT $300 million to help it to set up the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology.
The idea was to fast-track the institute to global recognition in the same way MIT has done with its partnership with universities in China, Singapore and Abu Dhabi. It also wanted replicate the success of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology that since its inception in 1991 has become one of the world's most popular universities. But progress has been slow and when I visited the site in August last year, the traffic from the centre of Moscow was awful and it was far from even being a building site. It was like London's Olympic Park without any infrastructure; it looked like a swamp.
The Russian government was also becoming very twitchy about the slow rollout of its flagship idea. Recent allegations of corruption within the organisation and a raid by the Russian equivalent of the FBI have focused minds at Skolkovo, and last week's inaugural Startup Village event at the incipient business park was a good opportunity to see how things were coming on.
So when I returned to Moscow for the two-day event and drove into the well-policed grounds, it was almost as if I was going to a UK music festival. A main stage in front of a seven-storied Hypercube building with a good soundsystem, a decent crowd and the inevitable drizzle of a grey day.
Things looked as if they had progressed. Not only did the traffic from the centre of Moscow seem less heavy but the swamp had become an aesthetic artificial lake and a building site was in full flow.
The vision of the Skolkovo Innovation Centre with its own economic zone with special laws and initiatives for startups suddenly looked possible. Rather like the proposed Skolkovo university, thoughts of Skolkovo as a kind of Russian Hong Kong were easy to pick up on.
As the first day came to an end and a somewhat creepy drone hovered overhead, the surrounding tents of Russian-speaking events spilled out into the hypercube to see the many startups demonstrating their products and around the main stage the crowd filled up.
The sudden realisation that not only was alcohol not available, but that night's proposed concert was going to be moved from the Startup Village to a venue in Moscow because of the weather dampened my particular spirits, but showed how seriously Skolkovo was taking the event.
The following day there was a different feel. Word had got around that Prime Minister (and ex-President) Medvedev would be coming to the event. Security was tightened, the organisers were frenetic and the atmosphere became more tense.
His arrival brought abseiling snipers to the hypercube and after he had shook a few hands and met a few companies, his helicopter took off leaving behind a Startup Village that went into overdrive. Without stretching the festival metaphor too far, it was as if the Rolling Stones had just played a gig and then deserted the stage, leaving behind a frenzied crowd.
It seems as though the Russian government was happy too, since it has pledged to support another Startup Village event next year with quadruple the number of attendees (from 5,000 to 20,000). The Skolkovo idea will also spread beyond Moscow to the rest of the country, following an encouraging Startup Village "warm-up" tour that covered 21,000 kilometres and 16 cities from Novosibirsk to Vladivostok.
As the event drew to a close and some (impressive) Russian bands took to the stage, some wine and beer was finally opened and a huge ox was spit-roasted and wheeled over to the stage. It felt like a real festival; exultant and triumphant.
Russians love their food and as they all ploughed to the bovine equivalent of Startup Village's fatted calf, it felt that perhaps the government's support for the Skolkovo project had crystallised and it would be a white knight, not a white elephant.
Russia's dreams of creating an authentic tech hub had crossed a Rubicon, but there may be many Rubicons ahead before it becomes the coolest city on the planet.
Source: wired.co.uk