The Skolkovo Foundation has signed two cooperation agreements on the sidelines of the two-day Eastern Economic Forum (EEF), which kicked off Friday in Russia's Far Eastern port city of Vladivostok.
The agreements were signed with the Korea Institute of Startup and Entrepreneurship Development (KISED) and with the Roscongress Foundation. Under the first agreement, Skolkovo intends to implement a joint accelerator programme for Russian and South Korean companies, and to exchange experience in developing an ecosystem of innovative startups. KISED was set up in 2000 with the support of the Korean government, and works with a range of international partners, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the major Silicon Valley accelerator Plug and Play, to foster innovative startups and help them to commercialise their products, including on the global market.
KISED president Si-woo Kang, left, and Skolkovo's Vasily Belov pictured at the forum in Vladivostok on Friday.
With Roscongress – the organization that hosts the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) – Skolkovo plans to partner up to set the agenda for innovations development within the country’s major international forums, including SPIEF and EEF.
“We have to admit that intellectual potential has suffered greatly in the last 20 years,” said Skolkovo Foundation president Victor Vekselberg, speaking at the forum. He reminded the audience that the world’s leading IT companies such as Google and Microsoft often have numerous Russian specialists on their staff who decided to leave Russia, and said that only the creation of intellectual capital would enable the country to integrate into the modern economy.
The Skolkovo Foundation, which was set up with the aim of transforming the Russian economy from dependence on energy exports to a hi-tech innovations economy, is playing an active role in the EEF, which is being held for the second time. Alexander Chernov, senior vice president for external communications and advertising, is moderating a pitch session on the first day of the forum titled “Innovative Projects in the Far Eastern Federal District.”
Technological solutions proposed by Far East companies in the fields of robotics, information, healthcare and biotechnology not only offer considerable potential for Russia’s Far Eastern Federal District, they are also of interest to partners from Asia-Pacific countries, the forum’s organisers say.
Many of the panelists taking part in the session represent resident startups of the Skolkovo Foundation’s Far Eastern branch, such as Alexander Eremenko, general director of CIR Cosmo Resource, which works on the collection of satellite data. He is joined on the panel by Andrei Gridin, deputy director of the Centre of Robotics, which makes an educational kit that allows schoolchildren and students to build micro underwater robots, and by Andrei Mishchenko, general director of Rhonda Software, which makes quadrocopter software for counting people in crowds and other purposes.
The foundation’s senior vice president for innovation, Vasily Belov, is moderating the forum’s key session on Saturday, “The Innovative Economy: Identifying Areas of Growth.”
In Russia’s Far Eastern federal district, the extractive industries make up as much as a third of the regional economy – more than twice the Russian average, according to the forum’s programme.
“In view of this, accelerated development in the innovation sector is particularly important, both in terms of diversifying the regional economy and with respect to improving efficiency in the extractive sector during a period of low raw material prices,” the forum’s organisers say.
“Despite Russia investing adequately in research and development – on a par with the U.K., Canada and Norway in this respect – the range of innovative technologies on offer to businesses lags considerably behind that typical in developed economies. Developing the innovation sector in the Far Eastern Federal District will require a substantial increase in the supply of innovative technologies via three key channels: R&D localization on the part of major Asia-Pacific markets, growth in the number of innovative small and medium-sized enterprises, and an increase in the innovative activities of large companies in the region,” the forum’s programme states.
Other sessions at the forum include “Opening up the Russian Far East” – a plenary session moderated by former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd – as well as business dialogues between Russia and Korea and Russia and China, a Russian-Japanese business forum and sessions devoted to the Far East timber industry, energy markets, transport, investment and tourism.