Profile: Skolkovo, Russia

Situated on the western outskirts of Moscow in the centre of a 1,000-acre site sits the Skolkovo Hypercube building (pictured) . Potentially mistaken by the untrained eye as a modern art homage to the great Russian export Tetris, the Hypercube was officially opened last year and is to be the focal point of the country’s attempt to create its own Silicon Valley, dubbed Inograd.

Announced in 2010 by then president Dmitry Medvedev, Inograd has two major objectives. Firstly, the site is to be a fulcrum with which to turn Russia’s illustrious scientific know-how into commercial output – an uphill struggle considering entrepreneurial spirit is somewhat lacking in the region.

Secondly, it embodies the Kremlin’s efforts to convert from a country heavily dependent on the oil and gas industries into a post-industrial nation that embraces innovation.

To this end, Skolkovo has already received R50bn ($1.6bn), most of which has been spent on the construction of the site, with a total of $4.2bn promised to help support its emerging businesses. So far, $290m has been invested in Skolkovo start-ups, which now number more than 200. Alexander Lupachev, chief investment officer at the Skolkovo Foundation, says it plans to allocate between $100m and $200m per year. He told the Financial Times: “We want to be sure that by 2014 we have a critical mass of energetic people ready to move there.”

Start-ups at Skolkovo are coming in all shapes and sizes. Skolkovo features start-ups such as edu-tech Choister, which offers its users the opportunity to search for and compare educational programmes, e-commerce firm Fittingreality, which maps clothes to a customer’s body, and LiveMap, which is developing a display for motorcycle helmets.

It has attracted leading technology firms to the area with Kremlin-supported tax breaks, such as Microsoft, Intel and Cisco, some of which plan to open research and development centres to work in conjunction with the area’s growing start-up population. Skolkovo has also enlisted the help of leading universities, such as Stanford and Cambridge, to support the development of the innovation hub through mentorship.

It has also entered into a partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which will establish a university campus at the site known as the Skolvoko Institute of Science and Technology, or SkolTech. SkolTech will focus on five areas, each of which is planned to be developed into a tech cluster around Skolkovo.

They are information and communications technologies, energy science, biomedical science, nuclear science, and space science and technology. Each of the academic programmes will be integrated with 15 research centres to be situated around the site. There will also be a heavy focus on innovation and entrepreneurship on the curriculum, with the goal that all graduating students understand the potential and processes of tech transfer and research commercialisation.

The area is still very much in its formative stages, and it will take at least a decade before it starts to bear fruit, with the completed construction of Inograd penciled in for 2020. This timeline means Skolkovo may yet fall prey to political instability in Russia, which has unnerved some investors. The Moscow headquarters of the Skolkovo Foundation was the subject of a police raid in April.

Indeed, the idea that Skolkovo may generate Russia’s Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg will undoubtedly ruffle the feathers of the Russian oligarchy and its concrete ceiling.

However, Skolkovo is seen as crucial by many of its supporters to Russia’s attempts to modernise and catch up with a developed world that is quickly innovating ahead of Russia. Should it resist political plays to tangle the project up in knots, Skolkovo is destined to become the beating heart of Russian innovation in a country that is in desperate need of one.