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World watches Skolkovo
Published: 15 October, 2010, 15:40
Edited: 27 October, 2010, 22:45
What exactly is the Skolkovo innovation center and why is the world watching it so closely? Anatoly Aleksandrov, one of six co-founders of the center and the rector of Bauman University fills RT in with the details.
It seems to me that the main difference between "silicon valley" and "Skolkovo" is that silicon valley started out as a place to make a quick buck, ably assisted by money market finance promoters proposing that the low tax environment of both the municipality and the US state to enable blue sky thinking business ideas, and by a quirk of the capitalisation of digital product growth, silicoln valley had its successes as well as its failures. So it was and is all about making money from money making ideas, the markets were of course the key, and thus without a similar capitalist sector Skolkovo will be ajudged on the success of it selling on its discoveries to whomsoever, and certainly Solkovo's chosen R and D sectors are potentially fruitful even if Russia's industrial base of capital is founded on less innovated money-makers?
Yes, the difference is that Skolkovo is a BUSINESS project, not an Academie of Science....It is directed to MARKET offer and demand. The same way as in Silicon Valley foreign companies are present, like S.A.P. (Germany), Nokia (Finland), Fujitsu (Japan), Logitech (Switzerland), Opera Software (Norway), Philips (Netherlands), Olivetti (Italy), Hitachi (Japan), Sony (Japan) etc, in Skolkovo also research centers from foreign companies should be present. In fact, while in the U.S. the foreign presence is minority, in Skolkovo probably it will be the majority for years. Kaspersky Labs, U.A.C., Rusnano, Gazprom, Russian Technologies, Yandex, Vimpelcom, and perhaps Sitronics (they already have a R&D center in Zelenograd, so perhaps it wouldn´t be a good idea duplicating things, unless it is something necessary for their future)....probably will be some of the Russian participants in the R&D Projects of Skolkovo.