Geopolitical tensions will one day be in the past, but the future lies in innovations, Skolkovo Foundation president Victor Vekselberg told a packed audience of the foundation’s startups on the third and final day of the Open Innovations forum Friday.
"Our success is your success," Skolkovo Foundation president Victor Vekselberg told resident startups. Photo: Sk.ru.
Vekselberg held an open question-and-answer session with the foundation’s resident entrepreneurs to hear their queries and concerns and share his vision of the foundation’s future. In response to a question from Yekaterina Kotenko, vice president of Astro Digital, which makes technology for processing images taken from space and which does a lot of its business in the U.S., Vekselberg was clear that despite deteriorating relations with the West, Skolkovo remains an international project and expansion onto Western markets is only to be encouraged.
“Sooner or later, geopolitical problems will pass, and a mighty Russia will remain,” said Vekselberg, reminding the audience that Skolkovo startups are selected precisely for their export potential.
“Everything you develop should be in demand beyond the Russian market; presence on international markets is a sign of success, and we support it,” he said.
The working language of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), a graduate research university located in the Skolkovo innovation centre and set up in cooperation with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is English, Vekselberg pointed out, and both students and professors there come from all over the world. Kotenko is herself a graduate of Skoltech.
He conceded that the chill in relations could result in negative stereotypes — but that, he said, is a task for Russian companies working abroad to overcome for themselves.
“Your task is to smash those stereotypes,” said Vekselberg, adding that he has had a constant series of meetings with foreign representatives of innovations agencies during the forum, which is taking place at the newly opened Skolkovo Technopark.
“We’re an international project, so good luck in America and beyond,” he told Kotenko.
The meeting with the resident startups was for Vekselberg “the most important event of the forum,” he said.
Vekselberg took questions from the assembled entrepreneurs. Photo: Sk.ru.
“I am always saying that our success is your success. If you don’t create new, innovative products in all their various fields, that means we failed, no matter what impressive buildings we built,” he told the assembled entrepreneurs, who ranged from young science graduates to seasoned industry specialists from across Russia.
There are now more than 1,500 resident startups within the Skolkovo Foundation, employing more than 21,000 people, said Vekselberg, adding that Skolkovo residents have applied for more than 1,100 international patents: 17 percent of all the international patent applications originating in Russia.
More than 150 of those startups are already selling their products on international markets, he said, and of the 16 major corporations that have opened R&D centres at the Skolkovo innovation centre, several are leading foreign companies, such as the U.S.’s Boeing, Japan’s Panasonic and Dutch tech giant Philips, which signed an agreement to open a centre of its own on the first day of the forum.
“They’re interested in being here in order to be closer to you, to have the opportunity to monitor the most interesting projects as early as possible,” Vekselberg told the startups, which represented all five of the foundation’s clusters: IT, energy, space, biomed and nuclear technologies.
Skolkovo is also something of an “anti-emigration project,” said Vekselberg, pointing out that 40 percent of the professors at Skoltech are scientists from the former Soviet Union who had moved abroad to work before returning to Russia to carry out their research at the university.
“I’d really like everyone to have faith that today, in our country, right here, there is the opportunity to try to make your idea a reality, to get support, to try to set up your own company and move forward,” said Vekselberg.
“It can be hard to believe, because we can’t separate ourselves completely from geopolitical factors, but the fact that the Skolkovo project is supported by the government … is proof that the future lies in the generation of innovative entrepreneurs.”
Other questions from the entrepreneurs present included a request to set up a centre dedicated to innovations in music and culture, which, to the surprise of some in the hall, Vekselberg said would be set up at Skolkovo within the next six months. He also welcomed a proposal from TION, which asked the president to consider using its air filtration systems in the accommodation currently being built at Skolkovo. Vekselberg joked that it would be a good way to ensure that the technology really works.
Skolkovo is also set to provide driverless transport developers with a testing ground on its territory in the near future, the foundation’s president reminded residents, urging them to take advantage of the facility.