By James Willsher (Business Weekly)
Russian technology clusters and startups are looking to strengthen links with Cambridge, it emerged at Moscow’s Open Innovations forum held last week.
Hundreds of Russian startups, state-backed companies and regional governments were promoting their services at the forum, held in Technopolis, a vast exhibition space in an industrial area in the east of the capital.
The focus of the event was partnership with China, and not only was recent Cambridge investor Huawei occupying a central position in the exhibition hall, Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang addressed a plenary session along with Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev.
Medvedev told the forum that between 2007 and 2013, the government had provided 700 billion roubles’ worth of support to 13,000 tech projects.
He said: “The Russian innovation sector is still at the stage of establishing; it is far from ideal. We have a lot of state companies – is that good or bad? That’s another issue for until we have a balance between state and private.”
His words were echoed in the hall’s Start-Up Zone, where fledgling tech companies pitched to Russian and Chinese investors, that what’s missing at the moment is business development and marketing expertise.
Valerya Mayboroda, of tech business angels StartTrack, said: “It would be good for the UK to work with us, it would be very interesting for our startups to visit Cambridge to see their businesses, as Russian startups are not very ahead in terms of business development. I think it would be great, for our start-ups and for our industry.”
Also prominent in the exhibition hall was Skolkovo, an embryonic high tech business park located in a suburb of Moscow. The idea is to co-locate research and development labs with commercial experts, in order to foster new industries beyond Russia’s natural resources boom.
Professor Natalia Berloff of Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) is living proof of the links between Cambridge and Skolkovo, being a Professor at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), on leave of absence for three years to develop photonics and quantum materials initiatives in Skoltech.
She said: “There is a lot of potential for interaction and partnership between our universities and the clusters of companies. Cambridge University and Skoltech as well as the Skolkovo cluster and Silicon Fen share common goals and attitudes, and we are trying to strengthen the links even further.
“In Skoltech three faculty members have DAMTP as their previous institution. Our main link to the Russian-speaking scientific diaspora comes from RuSciTech — a Cambridge-based association of scientists. We have already had several round table discussions, meetings and conferences with Cambridge scientists and the administration over the last three years. We would welcome even stronger links, both scientific and entrepreneurial.”
The Open Innovations forum was attended by more than 4,000 delegates, including 800 startups from 19 countries.
This story ran on October 25 in Business Weekly.