Should we wash these technoparks or make new ones?
Technoparks went to zero
Natalia Ki, X (Informcurrier-svyaz magazine) No. 06-2012
Technoparks, science parks, and IT parks are a good example of public–private cooperation. However, in Russia it is not the most productive. The technopark is being created for the sake of the technopark itself, and the achievement of its goal – the catalyzation of innovations – is lost in the three pines of economic, organizational and political interests.
Anecdote in the subject. An Italian family in the kitchen. The husband is reading the newspaper, the wife is cooking dinner. A boy flies in from the street – insanely dirty, in a torn shirt, with a black eye. Wife: "Well, dear, will we wash this one or will we make a new one?"
This simple anecdote was told in one of the halls of the business program "Svyaz-Expocomma-2012" by Viktor Sidnev, who together with the Agency for Strategic Initiatives represents the Troitsk Technopark (since July this year – Moscow), a candidate for inclusion in the program "Creation of High-tech technoparks in the Russian Federation".
To Troitsk – from Moscow?! In the entourage of the meeting of the Interdepartmental Commission for the Coordination of Activities for the Creation, operation and development of technoparks in the field of high technologies, this anecdote says that the science cities of Soviet and post-Soviet times, which have preserved their infrastructure in some way, are a good potential for technoparks.
At one time, there were 12 thousand scientific jobs in Troitsk – there are 3 thousand, 40 hectares of space left, at the moment there are 20 operating companies, fifty are planned. "First of all, we count on our working scientific forces. In addition, in Soviet times, people went to work from Moscow to Troitsk. And now it will be so. Moscow is an unlimited source of any competencies," the expert Sidnev is convinced. In order for Troitsk to become a territory of investment development, it will take 4-5 billion rubles. To get them at least partially, you need to find a place in the state program.
What about the technopark? Within the framework of the program for the creation of high-tech technoparks (approved in 2006, extended in 2010 to 2014), which have a long and dramatic history in Russia (for its beginning, see, for example, "X" No. 3'2005, pp. 30-70), 7 billion rubles were invested in the infrastructure of technoparks from the federal budget, 8.5 billion from regional budgets and 4 billion from private investors (Fig. 1).
The revenue of resident companies of technoparks has exceeded 39 billion rubles since 2009. (Fig. 2). As reported by Deputy Minister of Communications and Mass Communications (at that time) Ilya Massukh, in 2012, the tax accruals of existing technoparks with the accumulated total equaled the amount of funding from the federal budget with the accumulated total. Thus, technoparks, in the words of I. Massukh, "went to zero in three or four years of operation." Further, it is planned that the growth curve of tax deductions will be steeper than the curve of federal funding.
The current dozen of "software" technoparks gives the country 9 thousand high–tech jobs, in 2014 their number should exceed 16 thousand. 34% of the projects of residents of technoparks are in the stage of small–scale production, 27% are in full-fledged production, 22% are at the stage of research and development and 17% are going through a life cycle stage called "industrial sample".
In the mid-noughties, big bets were placed on technoparks. The then Minister Leonid Reiman saw them as growth points for achieving the strategic goal of making Russia an "intellectual property holder." Technoparks were considered both as a way to support information technologies and as one of the tools that would allow increasing the share of IT in the ICT revenue basket. So far, technoparks have not fulfilled this function: their noticeable contribution to the growth of the sector is out of the question, and IT itself has not yet built up the "muscles" to 50% of the ICT market. In May 2009, then Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov called for the removal of technoparks "from their infancy," and Minister Igor Shchegolev at the same time put on the agenda the Law on Technoparks, "for several years suffocated in a legal vacuum and forced to rely on anything but ICT." The federal Law on technoparks is still in the draft, but the largest part – a third of the residents of technoparks – still specialize in information and communication technologies, a quarter – in high–tech chemistry, 16% - in nanotechnology, 2% give their intelligence to the nuclear industry and space.
Technoparks have their own ratings Tatarstan is legitimately in the lead in the rating of the program participants (see the table): three technoparks are located here at once – "IT Park" in Kazan, its branch in Naberezhnye Chelny and "Himgrad" in the capital of the republic.
If Himgrad is Russia's first technopolis in the field of chemical industry with a total area of 131 hectares, then IT Park has IT and software, medical and space technologies in its development priorities. On its territory there is a business incubator for 20 startups, a data center, which is a single point of presence of 16 telecom providers. 2864,101 million rubles were invested in the creation of the Kazan "IT park", its branch - 895 million rubles.
The second in the rating of the program, the technopark of Novosibirsk Akademgorodok ("Akadempark") is a multidirectional complex with a cluster structure. 85 resident companies with 1,395 jobs work in the field of IT and telecom, biotechnology and biomedicine, instrumentation, new materials and nanotechnology. The amount of financing is several times higher than in Tatarstan – 11,660.982 million rubles. In early 2012, the Information Technology Center was put into operation here. In 2011-2012, three more technopark facilities were built: these are the business incubators of the Kuzbass Technopark and the Ankudinovka IT Park near Nizhny Novgorod, and the information and computing complex of the Mordovia Technopark.
It is clear that there is a queue of a dozen applicants for inclusion in the state program (including from Kaliningrad, from Russian Island, from Krasnoyarsk, Sverdlovsk) with a total amount of required investments of 9692.93 million rubles. In addition to Troitsk, three more objects of public-private partnership "showed up" during the May Days of Infocommunications. For example, Bashkortostan-based Kurai is developing wireless data transmission systems and a low-orbit satellite constellation. Since 2007, he has concluded 13 agreements with enterprises of Bashkortostan, and in 2015 he announces plans to exceed the revenue of resident companies over investments in the work of the technopark. The assertive "Moskvich", while lagging behind in the rating from other applicants, is formed on the basis of AZLK, which was in complete disrepair, plans to specialize in IT, nano- and composite materials, biotechnologies. The total amount of financing in the period 2007-2014 will amount to 2.1 billion rubles, private financing is measured in the amount of 3.5 billion rubles.
Technopark and Technopark According to various unofficial data, there are about a hundred so-called technoparks in the country.
So–called - because there is no complete set of identification "tags": there are no requirements for technoparks in the field of high technologies, there are no common concepts "resident of the technopark", "management company", "infrastructure facilities of the technopark". Pseudo-parks coexist with long-known scientific technoparks in Dubna and Chernogolovka. "You drive along the MKAD and along the way you see at least three technoparks, which are not even technoparks. Offices are provided – God forbid, if for high technologies," complains I. Massukh. All this has yet to be determined, resolved, approved – despite the fact that the campaign to create technoparks in Russia has been going on for more than six years and we are talking about considerable funds from federal and regional budgets. If, according to the forecast of the Ministry of Communications, in 2012-2014 the volume of private investments will remain within the delta of 1.2-1.8 billion rubles, and federal annual deductions are planned in the amount of 1.5 billion rubles, then funds from regional budgets will grow to 2.8 billion per year. Therefore, it will most likely be cheaper to "launder" and re-sort existing parks than to endlessly subsidize new ones.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru19.06.2012