Skolkovo’s Startup Village and the plenary session of the Open Innovations forum have made it through to the final of the Best Experience Marketing Awards.
Both Skolkovo events are nominated in the same category: best solution in event marketing and integrated communications. They were selected for the final after a preliminary vote by the awards’ expert council, which includes representatives of companies including Yandex, Vimpelcom, Sberbank and SAP.
Skolkovo Foundation president Victor Vekselberg at the opening of the Startup Village in 2017. Photo: Sk.ru.
Events are judged on their relevance, creativity, the quality of their execution, and return on investment, as well as on how well they are integrated with the target audience via various communication channels. The finalists will present their projects to the expert council in a PhD-style defense on February 15, and the awards ceremony will take place on February 17.
“Our inclusion in the list of finalists for this prestigious prize is for us not only confirmation of the high quality of Skolkovo events, it’s also an opportunity to study best practices tried and tested by our colleagues from various companies,” said Yekaterina Inozemtseva, vice president for strategy and investment at the Skolkovo Foundation.
The plenary session on the second day of the three-day Open Innovations forum held at Skolkovo last October was titled “Digital Economy: Society, Business, Government.” The panel headed by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev also included Jack Ma, head of the Chinese internet retail giant Alibaba Group; Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel; Jacqueline Poh, CEO of GovTech Singapore; Professor Michio Kaku, a Japanese-American theoretical physicist and futurist; and Sberbank CEO Herman Gref. The panel discussed the digital revolution and the importance of education in developing a digital society and equipping future generations with the skills they will need in tomorrow’s world.
The Startup Village is an annual two-day open-air conference and exhibition held at Skolkovo in the summer for startups, entrepreneurs and investors from around the world. Last year’s event attracted more than 20,000 people from 80 countries.