SIEMENS

The district of Odintsovo, located just a few kilometers southwest of Moscow, has a great reputation as a recreational area. The district’s village of Skolkovo, which has a population of just a few hundred, is surrounded by woods, meadows, and farms. Nonetheless, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has big plans for Skolkovo, where the Moscow School of Management — one of the best schools for Russia’s business elite — was opened in 2006. Medvedev now plans to build the country’s most advanced research and innovation center on a 380-hectare site — surrounded by a new city with up to 25,000 residents.

Medvedev has made the rapid construction of Skolkovo a presidential priority. Groundbreaking is scheduled for mid-2011 and the new city is to be completed in just three years. When completed, it will boast comfortable residential buildings, shops, kindergartens, schools, and hotels. The new city’s centerpiece will be the Skolkovo Institute of Technology (SIT), a research facility focusing on information technology, energy efficiency, medical engineering, biotechnology, nuclear technology, and aerospace systems. The Russian government plans to spend around €3 billion on Skolkovo. The project will be the core of an ambitious modernization program designed to help Russia catch up with leading industrialized nations in terms of modern technology.

“Skolkovo will be an open, transparent, and internationally focused innovation hub that will attract not only talented Russian scientists but also foreign experts and specialists,” says Stanislav Naumov, a former Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade who is now responsible for public relations at the Skolkovo Foundation. “The city,” he adds, “will offer the best possible conditions for research and teaching.” The establishment of SIT will mark the first time in Russia’s history that Russian scientists will work, study, and teach alongside foreign nationals. The Russian government is also trying to get foreign companies and start-ups to invest in Skolkovo. Foreign enterprises will be allowed to hold as much as 100 percent of the companies supported by the Skolkovo project, and can probably also expect to receive tax breaks from the Russian government.

International Cooperation. In 2010 Siemens became the first major German company to launch a strategic partnership with the initiators of the Skolkovo project. Siemens will help build the urban infrastructure for Skolkovo by providing building system and water treatment technologies, public transport system components, and solutions for energy efficiency. “Skolkovo is to become a model city for ecology and the environment,” says Siemens project manager Alexander Averianov. Siemens Corporate Research head Dr. Reinhold Achatz believes that “the focus areas of the Skolkovo project align perfectly with Siemens’ strategy, which is geared toward differentiation and sustainability in the attractive Russian market.” Siemens also plans to build one of the company’s biggest international research centers in Skolkovo at a facility that will employ some 200 researchers and scientists.

“The Skolkovo project is the right approach for creating a suitable climate for international cooperation,” says Dr. Martin Gitsels, who manages Siemens’ research activities in Russia. Dr. Oliver Heid, a Siemens expert in new technologies and concepts, has high hopes for joint research in areas such as particle acceleration. And he has plenty of respect for the expertise of Russian scientists. “They’ve got a great reputation in the fields of particle acceleration, materials research, and mathematics,” he says. Particle accelerators are used to fight tumors with radiation therapy, for example. Researchers plan to make the devices smaller and more powerful. “That would be a major step in medical technology,” says Heid.

To ensure rapid development of the research city, the Skolkovo-Innograd Foundation was established. Viktor Vekselberg, the founder and owner of Renova Holding, an investment firm, is the president of the foundation, whose council includes representatives of Siemens. Vekselberg is not comfortable with the description of Skolkovo as “Russia’s Silicon Valley.” “Skolkovo can only mark the beginning of a long road to modernization,” he explains. “Here we want to find out on a small scale how we can solve some of the problems facing our country.” He believes that one of Skolkovo’s main purposes is to keep young skilled specialists in Russia and make the country an attractive research location for foreign scientists and companies — a “Russian bridge between science and business.”