Open Innovations Startup Tour – 2018
Open Innovations Startup Tour will select the best technology startups
The largest event in Russia to search for promising innovative projects and develop the competencies of novice startup teams, the Open Innovations Startup Tour, in 2018 will start in February.
The event has been held in different cities of Russia since 2011 and is aimed at popularizing technological entrepreneurship, supporting regional innovation teams and projects and developing the competencies of regional service providers.
It is organized by the Skolkovo Foundation with the assistance of other national development institutions.
Pekka Vilyakainen, Advisor to the President of the Skolkovo Foundation, comments on the achievements of the Open Innovations Startup Tour:
"As part of the mission to popularize the ideas of entrepreneurship, we managed to spread information not only in large cities and federal sources, but also to bring it to people in the regions. The general understanding of startups and their importance in the country's economy has developed significantly. We have managed to prove that in a country where traditionally all bets are placed on oil and gas, there is another source of enrichment and growth – technological entrepreneurship."
In 2018, the Startup Tour will arrive in 9 cities of Russia: Perm (February 6-7) and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (March 28 – 1), Tyumen (March 5-6), Izhevsk (March 13-14), Kaliningrad (March 21-22) and Ulyanovsk (March 27-28), Belgorod (April 4-5), Ulan-Ude (April 9-10) and Veliky Novgorod (April 17-18).
The two-day tour program in each of the cities includes a competition and a conference for startups. The jury will select the best projects in three areas: biomedicine, industrial technology and IT.
In addition, the leading experts of the Skolkovo Foundation, together with well-known entrepreneurs, venture investors, mentors and business angels, will hold educational events and mentoring sessions. Thus, each participant will be able to receive competent feedback about their project. Projects from the capital city of the Open Innovations Startup Tour 2018 - Ulan–Ude - will receive additional minutes for presentation, as well as vouchers to the Startup Village, regardless of the results at the regional stage.
In 2017, over five thousand young scientists and entrepreneurs took part in the events of the Open Innovations Startup Tour, 33 projects became winners of regional competitions and made it to the semifinals of Startup Village. The organizers do not stop there and plan to expand the technological startup community.
"Over the years, Startup Tour has gathered a whole team of like–minded people, rallied a community of 145 thousand people – entrepreneurs, university professors, investors and other ecosystem participants," says Pekka Vilyakainen. – And this work will continue. I have set a goal for myself that in the coming years the community will grow to one million people."
The Open Innovations Startup Tour 2018 will be co-organized by the Russian Venture Company (RVC), as well as the Fund for Assistance to the Development of Small Forms of Enterprises in the Scientific and Technical Sphere, the Agency for Technological Development (ANO "APR"), the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (FRII), the VEB Innovations Foundation, the Rosinfokominvest Foundation.
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