Before the start of a large event in the frameworks of G20 conducted in Russia – Summit of Alliance of Young Entrepreneurs G20 – which will take place this week at Skolkovo Moscow School of Management, the delegation of the Alliance of Young Entrepreneurs of the Great Twenty visited Skolkovo Innovation Center.
In Skolkovo Technopark young entrepreneurs conducted a meeting with Foundation staff members in charge, its residents, as well as representatives of young entrepreneur community of the Moscow School of Management “Skolkovo”. Anna Nikina, supervisor of international programmes and business partnership development issues in Technopark said in her interview to Sk.ru that today’s meeting had an advantage in the form of sincere, live business interest for cooperation with Skolkovo and its key institutions. Average age of the delegation members was about 30+, meaning that today there were many people among the guests who have grown old in business. It is also important to highlight that among the delegation members there were representatives of key development institutions of the G20 alliance summit member states.
“Young representatives”, said Anna Nikina who moderated the meeting, “are already quite well informed about us, know about Skolkovo in general but wanted, as one might say, feel everything with their own hands and see with their own eyes. Today, according to the active and very concrete, focused questions as well as range of business interests expressed at the meeting in the lobby of the protocol part of the event, guests were interested in practical issues of cooperation, for example with Skolkovo Technopark, prospects of cooperation or studies in Skoltech, variants of cooperation with the Foundation in the R&D sphere and other issues.”
“Today we didn’t simply have an excursion at the Technopark or a protocol meeting with foreign guests, but a productive business dialogue”, stated Anna Nikina.
Meeting participants listened to the presentation of the Foundation resident “Optogard Nanotech” and a general presentation about the Skolkovo Innovation Center given by the international projects coordinator Dmitri Politov. Yekaterina Gaika told the Canadian and Italian guests about the most interesting projects of the IT cluster, guests also talked with the head of the entrepreneur community of Moscow School of Management “Skolkovo” Maxim Karpov and a well-known expert on innovative entrepreneurship Yuri Mitin. Skoltech programme was presented by the university representative Justin Varilek.
Marsha Josephs, general director of the Canadian Youth Business Foundation (CYBF) shared her impressions after the meeting:
“Canadian group is presented by two organizations – “Canadian Alliance of Young Entrepreneurs” and our foundation”, she said. “Our main goal, same as for Skolkovo, is to help young entrepreneurs to start their own business, develop economic entrepreneurial activity among youth and provide economic growth in the long run. In connection with this we are very interested in experience exchange with organizations engaged in completion of similar tasks.”
Hugo Lavasseur, head of the R&D of the Canadian IT company “Deltasco Solutions Inc.”, marked that he was expecting in the first place to see how Russia aspired to create an infrastructure of innovations and at the end of the day was very much impressed with what he saw. “I work in Montreal which is called North Silicon Valley since quite some time. This is why it was especially interesting for me to see how governments of other countries work on creation of similar projects in their countries. Here today I got many new useful contacts, when I get back home, I’ll start correspondence with everyone I got acquainted with in Skolkovo”, said the Canadian.