Foggy Innograd

The Emerald City of SkolkovoBorislav Friedrich, "Energy and Industry of Russia" No. 12-2011

The Russian Silicon Valley, the Skolkovo Innovation Center, has started its work. The first scientific conference was held, scientists and businessmen who will directly develop and implement the ideas born in this science city spoke. However, what Skolkovo is all the same, how this center will work and what to expect from it, has remained unclear.

The devil is in the detailsOfficials pronounce the words "innovation" and "nanotechnology" as a mantra.

These terms have already filled their teeth, because if you don't turn on domestic news, there will definitely be a report on the next innovations and new breakthroughs in the field of nanotechnology.

But specific things: who will work at Skolkovo, what they will work on and how new technologies will be introduced into production is still shrouded in fog. (But, as stated when creating the city of innovation, it is the immediate commercialization of all developments that is one of the main tasks!) And the impression begins to form that explanations will not follow.

And this is despite the fact that the leadership of our country declares the complete information openness of Skolkovo. So, President Medvedev in one of his speeches said that Skolkovo is not some kind of inter–party, but a public project.

– Therefore, citizens should be fully aware of what is being prepared, how these programs are funded, information should be absolutely open and public. It is also critically important to promote information about Skolkovo abroad, where awareness of the project is insufficient," he said.

Arkady Dvorkovich, the assistant to the head of state, also expresses similar thoughts. Answering questions about Skolkovo, he drew attention to the fact that the activities of the science city need to be made more open and establish interaction with everyone who wants to cooperate with Skolkovo:

– There are two points on which more needs to be done – this is the publicity of the work, greater availability of information about Skolkovo's activities for everyone who is interested in it, primarily in Russia, but also abroad. And the second is finding convenient forms of work for all those who are interested in cooperation with Skolkovo.

However, there is no openness, the public does not know about specific projects that are being implemented in the innovation center. We are not told, for example, that new energy efficiency solutions are about to be introduced. So maybe these projects and new discoveries just don't exist?

At least some specifics were heard only from the mouth of the first deputy head of the presidential administration Vladislav Surkov, who last spring said that the actual construction of the technology center in Skolkovo would take three to seven years, and the scientific environment there could be formed in ten to fifteen years. However, these cautious assessments were drowned in a chorus of enthusiasm about the creation of a domestic innovation center, which, of course, in the near future will have to overtake the American "Silicon Valley".

But even the Nobel laureate Zhores Alferov, co–chairman of the advisory scientific council of the Skolkovo Foundation, said that it would not be possible to understand whether the Skolkovo center took place or not until two years later, and before that the center still has a long way to go, where there are a lot of dangers.

In particular, Skolkovo may become a banal PR project, or even worse, Skolkovo may become a territory of preferential taxation, where companies that do not produce anything innovative will strive.

Unfortunately, this option is very possible… It's not for nothing that the president of the Skolkovo Foundation, Viktor Vekselberg, announced the need to develop a special legal regime in Skolkovo, and the head of the Ministry of Economic Development, Elvira Nabiullina, noted that tax and customs benefits would be provided for Skolkovo.

Predicted failure?The structure of the center itself is puzzling.

The proposed center should simultaneously conduct research on all five priority areas of modernization: these are energy, information technologies, telecommunications, biomedical technologies, nuclear technologies. There is an opinion that these directions should not be carried out together on a relatively small plot of land due to the fact that they are all different and require completely different means, technological and infrastructural costs, the level of control and security.

As for the land, the very choice of a place for an innovation center is surprising. Firstly, Skolkovo is located in the west of Moscow, in one of the most expensive areas, 5-7 kilometers from Barvikha. According to various estimates, the cost of a hectare of land in this area is, depending on the location, from 1.5 million US dollars and above. Accordingly, there are high prices for real estate, construction, goods and services. In the same California Silicon Valley, which we are so eager to emulate, the cost of renting office and production space is relatively low, any young company can open an office for itself.

In addition, the area of the American valley is about 400 thousand hectares, while Skolkovo is only 375 hectares.

By the way, last summer, apparently realizing that there would not be enough land, the Skolkovo Foundation turned to First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov with a request to add another 103 hectares. And the government commission for the development of housing construction has determined that the project already requires 600 hectares, so it is necessary to purchase additional plots of land.

I will note one curious fact: the lands around Skolkovo, the very ones that will sooner or later be bought at the expense of the federal budget, belong to Roman Abramovich, which leads to certain suspicions about objectivity when choosing a place for innograd.

In addition, critics note that the Skolkovo configuration does not agree with the international experience that the authorities promised to borrow: there are practically no scientists on the foundation's board – they are placed in a separate "Advisory Scientific Council", and the chairmen of this council – Zhores Alferov and Roger Kornberg – are not included in the main council. From this, many Western experts conclude that harmonious cooperation of fundamental academic science and applied R&D (research and development – design work) is not planned, and the same Alferov is needed for authoritative coverage of the "window dressing".

In fact, the state, without having developed objective criteria for the success or failure of the project, began planning the economic and legal regime of the territory. But the absence of public criteria or at least benchmarks in the project does not allow us to assess the degree of its success and removes the project from public control.

It is no accident that Jan Campbell, a professor at the State University of Economics of the Czech Republic, when journalists asked him about Skolkovo, noted that the center has no future, at least such as its creators draw:

– It will be a success as a business school for elite children, where the tuition fee will be about 50 thousand euros per year, and the annual salary of a professor (of course, a foreign one) is 300 thousand dollars. If we talk about Skolkovo as a park of innovations that should be created and applied with the help of large corporations, primarily Western ones – Microsoft, Cisco, Intel – then this is a misconception. No Western corporation will share advanced ideas with Russia. They will warm up something old, like coffee. That's why I think Skolkovo is a temporary fashion phenomenon. But I really hope I'm wrong! – said the professor.

Well, perhaps all the critics of Skolkovo are mistaken, and soon Russia will simply be overwhelmed by a wave of innovative solutions. However, so far Skolkovo looks more like the Emerald City from Alexander Volkov's book.

Let me remind you that the ruler of this city, in order to convince the residents that the city is really all made of emeralds, forced everyone to wear green glasses. But where can I get such innovative glasses to believe in Skolkovo?

reference
The Skolkovo Innovation Center is a planned ultramodern scientific and technological complex for the development and commercialization of new technologies. The complex should be built on the territory of the Novoivanovskoye urban settlement near the village of Skolkovo, in the eastern part of the Odintsovo district of the Moscow region.
On November 12, 2009, in the annual message of the President of Russia to the Federal Assembly, it was said for the first time about the creation of a modern technology center following the example of the American Silicon Valley and other similar foreign centers (they exist in France, India, Malaysia, etc.). On December 14, 2010, the construction of the Skolkovo innovation center was launched.
The innovation center is divided into several clusters, which the technopark will have to serve. The activity of the technopark within the framework of the Skolkovo project is conditioned by one main goal – to provide the participating companies of the Skolkovo project with all the necessary support so that they can successfully develop their technological assets and corporate structure. Technopark implements this task by attracting infrastructure, resources and other opportunities of the Skolkovo project and its partners.
Biomed cluster. The strategic goal is to create an ecosystem to support and develop innovations in the field of biomedical technologies. Priority areas of cluster development: biomedicine, bioinformatics, biopharmaceuticals, industrial biotechnologies.
Energotech cluster. The main task of the cluster is to create an environment to support innovative developments in areas related to the implementation of solutions aimed at reducing energy consumption by industrial, housing and communal services and municipal infrastructure. 
IT cluster. The cluster's activities are focused on the development of strategic areas of information technology, which should result in the creation of an effective ecosystem model in Russia for the development and commercialization of innovations in the IT sector.
The Cosmos cluster. Development and commercialization of domestic space technologies.
The Core Tech cluster. Priority areas of development of the cluster of nuclear technologies: nuclear science technologies, radiation technologies, technologies for creating new properties of materials, mechanical engineering, instrumentation and new microelectronics technologies, design technologies, design, modeling and engineering of complex technological objects and systems.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru07.07.2011