Innovation: we wanted the best...

Parallel worldsYerlan Baizhanov, Nadezhda Oynotkinova, "Expert Siberia"
Photo: Boris Baryshnikov

We have people who are imbued with the ideology of innovative business. And they have enough qualifications to implement this ideology. This means that in Akademgorodok it is possible to solve the task of building an innovative business at the world level

Interest in innovation has increased recently. The need to develop innovative business is often discussed by the top officials of the country and the region. As a rule, they say that innovation is a ticket to the future. But in practice things are not as smooth as we would like. Dmitry Verkhovod, Director of JSC "Technopark of Novosibirsk Akademgorodok", Andrey Bryzgalov, Deputy Director for Science of LLC "Uniscan", Andrey Fedorenko, head of the project "Center for Technological Support" of the technopark, discusses the state of innovative business, development prospects and the role of the technopark.

– Federal and regional authorities have recently been talking a lot about the need to support innovative business, the interest in which has grown in the media after these statements. And what is an innovative business now and what is its condition?

Andrey Bryzgalov (A.B.): – First of all, it should be noted that until recently many people confused science with innovation, which is not the same thing. Science is focused on the acquisition of knowledge, and money is received for new entities. Goals and objectives, the structure and personnel of academic science do not give it the opportunity to make new entities. Therefore, in those not-so-distant times, when it was believed that big science should be engaged in innovation, innovative business, in fact, lived its own life. Completely invisible to others. In Akademgorodok, in particular, the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences was on its own, and innovators were on their own.

– I hope at least they didn't interfere with each other?

A. B.: – They interfered, but indirectly.

Andrey Fedorenko (A. F.): – The SB RAS did not set a task to spoil the life of an innovative business.

A. B.: – Of course, there was no such goal, the SB RAS interfered in another sense. There are many potential customers in the field of innovation in the country. But they, by and large, saw Akademgorodok exclusively through the prism of the SB RAS.

Dmitry Verkhovod (D. V.): – In general, until recently, innovative business was developing, but at the same time remained in the shadow of the SB RAS. These were parallel worlds, and no one positioned an innovative business…

A. F.: – As an independent entity. Due to confusion, due to a lack of understanding of the differences between innovation and science, a negative opinion has developed about Akademgorodok. Customers from business structures tried to establish relationships and conclude contracts with scientists. But due to the fact that scientists were usually not ready to solve the customer's problems, did not try to understand what he really needed, businessmen received from them not a product or its prototype, but a report on the work done.

Subsequently, it turned out that the thing made according to the recommendations in the report either does not work, or does not work as it should, and something needs to be redone. And after a while, for example, the priorities of scientists changed, and the project simply ceased to interest them. And gradually, business structures formed the opinion that the men in Akademgorodok are smart, but nothing sensible and practical can be done with them.

D. V.: – You can bet. Returning to the question, recently thanks to the activities of associations ("SibAcademinnovation" and "SibAkademSoft") and indirectly the technopark, the authorities have an interest in innovative business. More precisely, the authorities have an understanding that innovative business cannot be completely identified with academic science.

– What is the difference between innovative business in developed economies and in Russia?

A. B.: – Innovative business has been there for a long time, and by trial and error it was possible to determine in which environment it should live. This environment is created by the state and private capital.

All over the world, the financial basis of innovative business is venture business, because there is no other way for innovations to enter the industry. In addition, infrastructure is needed, otherwise each enterprise will be forced to build an infrastructure for itself, which is impossible in practice.

– That's how it works there, but what is happening with us now?

A. B.: – Venture business already exists in Russia. For example, retail sells and buys not just stores, but entire retail chains. But at the same time there was no venture business in innovation.

– What about business angels?

A. B.: – Yes, there are business angels, but they are not a systemic thing, they have little effect on the economy. Business angels are, by and large, emotions.

A. F.: – Well said, really – emotions. Americans call this source of investment for novice innovators, which includes business angels, "Triple-F - Friends, Family & Fools" – that is, friends, family and the same abnormal give money.

A. B.: – In recent years, venture businessmen have grown up, who decided to transfer their experience to innovation. In addition, there were people in the leadership of the state who understood the ideology of innovative business and saw the link between the interests of the state and this business. Another plus was the fact that academic science decided to distance itself from the game on the field of innovation. Therefore, innovative business has become realistic and understandable to the business community. And finally, there was a crisis.

All the mentioned circumstances led to a cardinal leap. The leap is that there are people who are imbued with the ideology of innovative business and who have enough qualifications to bring this ideology to life. That is, a fairly large group of people appeared in the business community who decided to put on innovation. And, in general, the stars have developed so that in Akademgorodok it is possible to solve the problem of building an innovative business at the world level.

– That is, the main task of the Novosibirsk Akademgorodok technopark is to help innovators with the infrastructure corresponding to the mentioned world level?

D. V.: – Technopark, figuratively speaking, is the axis on which the components are strung: engineering infrastructure, infrastructure in the form of a property complex and in the form of technological centers.

For example, RUSNANO, when analyzing applications, concluded that at least 80 percent of the financing of the project is infrastructure: office and production facilities, equipment, technologies to start producing goods. And also the costs of related things like patenting, marketing, and so on. Even if RUSNANO has the opportunity to finance these 80 percent of the costs within each project, it is absolutely clear that the purchased equipment will not be used at full capacity in each individual project.

A. B.: – On the one hand, you can't buy all the equipment, because you need a lot of things, and on the other hand, what you buy will be loaded impulsively. And what to do with it then?

D. V.: – And, say, having invested 10 projects, that is, 10 separate infrastructures, later you will face the fact that a lot of money has been invested, but the effect of them is small.

In order to help innovative business to reach a new level, we need to solve the first task – to create a common infrastructure.

– Maybe that's why, faced with this problem, RUSNANO decided to create nanofabs? By the way, how similar are Chubais' nanofabs and technoparks?

D. V.: – There are similarities, but they are still different from each other.

A. B.: – Like a Lada from Toyota. There are also four wheels, but the devil is in the details.

The problem is that the author of the concept of nanofabs tried to mechanically transfer the American model to Russia, without taking into account our specifics.

D. V.: – Where did the idea of nanofabs come from? Faced with the same problems that we had, the intelligent people from RUSNANO realized that they would not be able to get away from the infrastructure. But let me remind you that RUSNANO's ideology is that they should mainly finance large-scale production. And if Russia had ready-made developments with its own market, not only at the level of prototypes and small series, then the Chubais department would not have thought about nanofabs. The whole problem is that there are few projects brought to such a stage. Therefore, RUSNANO came to the idea that it is necessary to create an infrastructure. But they have a strict limitation – everything must be tied to nano. And they try to say: yes, infrastructure is needed, but only for nano.

But, on the other hand, the final product, even based on nanotechnology, is not nano in the classical sense. And, meeting with specialists of the state corporation, we explained that creating infrastructure only for the promotion of nanotechnology is just as pointless and unpromising as building your own infrastructure for each individual project. Nano is a separate sector that can be present in all clusters of the technopark. We need a common infrastructure in which there will be nanocomponents. Let's say we have created an instrument-making infrastructure in the technopark, and you can buy some nano devices for it.

A. B.: – Having built a technopark, you will get a nanofab, having built a nanofab, you can get nothing.

D. V.: – And Chubais understands all this. Therefore, it will be decided to create a common infrastructure with RUSNANO, and not a separate nanofab.

– In general, the development of innovative business in Akademgorodok is hindered primarily by the lack of appropriate infrastructure?

D. V.: – In many ways. But there are still other problems. Now the regional authorities are creating venture funds, and this is a very positive and necessary process. But venture funds face the fact that there are no ready-made projects for investment. A venture investor does not have experts to evaluate existing projects. That is, a kind of gap has arisen: there is money, there are some projects, but it is impossible to link them.

This free niche should be filled by companies that help innovators grow into a venture investor. After all, the object for venture investment is an enterprise, not the idea itself or even a patent for it.

And the state should now understand that it is not necessary to look for profit where there is none. The profit is not given by the technopark itself, but by its residents-innovators. And the main thing is to help the innovative business with infrastructure not to be distracted from the main thing.

Support for innovative business will be the state's contribution to the future.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru03.09.2009