Seda Pumpyanskaya, VP and head of International relations department of the Skolkovo Foundation talks on agenda of this global business forum
Seda Pumpyanskaya: “This year at the World Economic Forum in Davos (January 21-27) there will be a quite strong emphasis on Russia, both in business and cultural program. Davos will take a closer look at our country, and the level of discussion will be the highest. Dmitry Medvedev plans to visit the event and take part in its two panel sessions. And German Gref of Sberbank is invited to the main plenary session on the Russian issues, entitled “Scenarios for the Russian Federation”. It’s also worth mentioning that intense cultural program, which takes place in Davos in line with the business program, will also have a strong “Russian accent”: on the very first day Davos’ guests will have a chance to enjoy a concert of Vladimir Spivakov’s orchestra “Virtuosos of Moscow”.
What is the Skolkovo Foundation program in Davos-2013?
“A decision was taken that this year we’ll held a joint event. On January 24 a combined Skolktech-MIT Accelerating Innovation session will take place. CEOs of biggest global companies are to take part in it, along with other important participants. And we already understand that there will be a full-house at this event, where Skolkovo president Viktor Vekselberg is to take part, together with MIT president Rafael Reif and Skoltech president Edward Crawley. We counted on 40-50 visitors, while we have more than 120 already registered. We are quite happy with the fact that MIT agreed to organize the event and finance it. And right after this session the will be a business dinner Innovation and Development as Global Priority, set by the B20 Target working group «Innovative Developpment as a Global Priority .
I’d like to mention also that last year we had more marketing, advertising type of program at Davos, we practically advertised the Skolkovo Foundation there. This year it’s more focused around G20 problematic. And, as usually, the Skolkovo Foundation president has intense schedule of meetings there, including ones with CEOs of several key partners of Skolkovo, such as Cisco, Alstom and some others, as well as some new companies.”
The G20 issues: what are other aspects of Davos agenda, interesting for Skolkovo?
“Russia just recently took its role as a leader of the “Business 20” group of countries for 2013. The B20 has gotten together for the first time in 2009, at the London G20 summit and since that time has been developing a large-scale work to elaborate and deliver message from the biggest global business communities. B20 leaders presented their proposals at Toronto, Cannes, Seoul, Los Cabos summits.
In 2013 Viktor Vekselberg was offered to form a target working group to formulate priorities of innovation development and to chair this group. The group started working on December 12, 2012 and brought together 40 high-ranked representatives of leading innovation companies in the sphere of biotech, energy, IT. And a law professor of Harvard University, ex-minister for strategic development of Brazil Roberto Unger was a special guest at this event. That discussion highlighted three main directions of further activity of the group: facilitating of the global growth through enhancing of competition, international cooperation and transfer of technologies.
The next meeting of B20 working group will take place, as I mentioned before, on January 24, at Davos, right after the Skoltech-MIT session. And next session will be held in March this year in Durban, South Africa, then there will be a series of meetings in St. Petersburg (in June, July and September). And in autumn final recommendations will be presented to G20 leaders”.