The Director of the Association of Innovative Regions of Russia Ivan Fedotov unfolded to Strategy Journal the innovative development of the Russian federal subjects and a new strategy of the Association.
Ivan Vladimirovich, first of all, what is the difference between the Association of Innovative Regions of Russia and the existing development institutions urged to promote and develop innovations in the country?
Unlike development institutions, we don’t distribute money. The Association of Innovative Regions of Russia is a union of executive heads and legislature of federal subjects of the Russian Federation, seeing the growth in their regions due to innovative development.
We assist large regional projects at the federal level and examine these projects; we help our regions to locally introduce the best implementation practices of administrative, infrastructure and investment projects. We actively execute interregional educational programs and support programs for young and talented innovators. We have successful practices in improvement of the legislation for the benefit of innovative business, sometimes we act as the driving force for the Russian innovations abroad.
You are a new Director of the Association. What changes do you have in store for it?
Any organization, if it doesn't change its strategy, finally stagnates. We would like to be flexible and efficient, therefore our first change made concerned the work of committees that lost the relevance of their activity. We transferred their work into a more practical course. Each committee is now headed on a federal level, while the heads of the regions either head the working groups or act as cochairmen of committees. For example, the Committee on Development of Industry became headed by Alexey Komissarov, the Director Industry Development Fund under Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, Oleg Fomichev, the State Secretary, the Deputy Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, headed the Committee on Innovative Modernization of Economy, Alexander Povalko, the Deputy Minister of Science and Education of the Russian Federation − the Committee on Education and so on.
The second significant change is that up to 80% of work of the Association will be undertaken by its directorate involving teamwork with the management of regions.
The third one: actual merging of AIRR resources with such a powerful expert center as RANEPA will let us fulfill the tasks set by our founders.
We also thoroughly strengthened our Supervisory Board. It included: Arkady Dvorkovich, the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia; Andrey Svinarenko, the CEO of RUSNANO Fund for Infrastructure and Educational Programs; Sergey Polyakov, the CEO of Fund for Assistance to Small Innovative Enterprises in Science and Technology; Alexander Braverman, the CEO of Federal Corporation for Development of Small and Average Business.
What goals would you like to achieve for the next years?
We would like our Association to become the main expert center, a single-window system for interaction between the federal center and the regions. By what means, you would ask?
Our plans are very ambitious. Regarding education a decision has already been made that AIRR will hold its own interregional cross-disciplinary Olympic Games. It will involve school pupils of 8-11 classes in all our regions. We actively support our young innovators. Russia needs to cultivate a new class of engineers, free from any limits and stereotypes, capable of making innovations, our future belongs to them. In order to fulfill this target the Association takes part in the execution of the federal program establishing Centers for Youth Innovation Creativity in Russia. In 2016 AIRR members applied for regional Centers for Youth Innovation Creativity totaled 110 million rubles. Besides, we support the Youth Professional Platform “Sustainable Future of Russia” and several other projects.
We agreed on cooperation with MSP Corporation regarding promotion of educational projects and the best practices of entrepreneurial development in our regions. As for our systematic work on creation of innovative activities infrastructure in cooperation with the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, we are now concentrated on the project on cluster development.
The Committee on the legislation indeed works really successfully. The plans of the Committee include improvement of Federal Law No. 44-FZ on Contractual System, the Law on Management of Intellectual Property, and a whole package of legislative initiatives prepared together with the Ministry of Education and Science.
We also assist our federal subjects in preparing various kinds of strategy and their promotion at multiple levels – regional, federal, international. There is an information part of work meant for showing the real progress and achievements of our regions.
It is one of our tasks – to show everybody that Russia has something to be proud of, especially in innovative products.
How is your cooperation with foreign partners organized?
Irrespective of the country, urbanization process stimulates the demand for resources and infrastructure – providing with food and water, energy and telecommunications, highways. There are already many projects under “clever city” concept in the world. According to global statistics, within the next two decades every week more than one million people – it is approximately equal to the population of Stockholm – will move to their permanent residence in the cities. It means that already now we should support implementation of the projects promoting creation of favorable environment for the residents of megalopolises.
We have signed a number of agreements with MasterCard and EY on promotion of innovative projects. The joint projects in the field of “smart city” integrated into usual processes and standard tasks of the city will be tried in the territory of 14 innovative regions of Russia.
I was many times asked the question why we signed agreements with the companies implementing final products. The answer is very simple: we are interested in all the most advanced and the best, including foreign technologies, to be in AIRR regions. Those products offered by MasterCard, EY and some other companies, involved in our process of negotiations now, allow bringing the quality of life in our regions to a higher level.
There is also one more vitally important point: if Russia in its innovative policy won’t be aimed at export and leading-edge technologies, then what’s the sense in making noncompetitive equipment?
Does this mean that Russian innovations should be focused on export?
Exactly. The regions enrolled in AIRR have huge potential. They contain hi-tech companies making competitive products, having import-substituting potential or are focused on export. About 20% of R&D costs, 25% of all technological innovation costs, 1/5 part of all innovative products in the country fall to the share of regions of the Association.
In my opinion, the scenario of innovative development of Russia should be based on the use of competitive advantages of the Russian economy not only in its traditional sectors, but also in its new hi-tech sectors, “economy of knowledge” and a change in the structure of the Russian export.
What prevents scientific developments from making profit or, as it is fashionable to say nowadays, from monetizing?
If we talk about pioneering developments, they are born at the intersection of business, science and governance. All new developments arise in the scientific centers. There is a certain distribution map showing where we have advanced designs in medicine, in the space branch, nuclear, IT developments, etc. Over 30% of novelties in Russia fall to the share of our regions, while the key “innovation donors” – Moscow and St. Petersburg – yet aren’t the members of AIRR. There are very interesting and numerous developments, but they still remain at their experimental stage “gathering dust on the shelves” or coming into the hands of unconscientious venture capitalists. Large foreign corporations having their own R&D-centers often buy such technologies for next to nothing, introduce them and then bring to the market as their own standalone product. Thus they raise millions of dollars, but Russia gets none. They have been talking about the lack of demand for innovations for ten years, but so far without any breakthrough shifts, thought it should be noted, that if various development institutions haven't been created in Russia, it would be no good at all.
For example: why new construction materials and technologies – unique Russian developments aren’t used everywhere? Because the cost of materials serving for 20 years and the materials serving for 200 years, naturally, differs. The legislation should be amended in relation this issue, in order to introduce modern standards, price should not be the decisive factor for the state procurements, while such characteristics as quality, durability, environmental friendliness should. Only then novelties will come into use.
What is going on in the regions now in terms of innovations?
Over the last years a large number of infrastructure facilities designed to support innovative business have been created in the Russian regions: science and technology parks, clusters, engineering centers, etc. In 2014 the National Technological Initiative was launched in Russia, it should result in the entry of the Russian leading companies into the global markets in the offing 2030-2035.
Now several interesting projects – Inotomsk and InnoKam are implemented. The concept of the latter one has been recently approved by the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev. Execution of development investment projects of the Kama cluster will enable to create more than 30 thousand high-performance jobs by 2020, to increase three times (up to 2 trillion rubles) the volume of shipped products, while the size of the gross value added in the Kama cluster – three times (up to 1,1 trillion rubles).
In January of this year the rating “Innovative Business in the Russian Regions”, a joint analytical product of AIRR and RANEPA, was presented during the Gaidar Forum. What was the purpose of this rating? What function it performs?
Today there are three ratings of innovative activity of regions. Of them two ratings belong to AIRR: “The Rating of Innovative Regions of the Russian Federation” and “Innovative Business in the Regions of Russia” estimating hi-tech productions and innovation development potential due to these productions.
Who are those our rating is created for? First of all, these are the investors considering some options of placing productions and R&D-centers in the Russian regions. Also this rating is focused on the regional governance and business, for them the rating is an assessment of conditions and results of investment made into the region.
AIRR rating has already arisen much interest from our western partners. We have an agreement with OECD about bilateral promotion of this analytical product. There are already some inquiries from the Chinese investors requesting the rating in order to analyze investment activity.
We also agreed with the Agency for Strategic Initiatives our coordination of work and data exchange, while forming the national rating of conditions and investment climate in the territorial subjects of the Russian Federation where, by the way, AIRR regions hit seven spots in the top ten.
The source: “Strategy Journal”