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02 July 2010
President Medvedev Invites Silicon Valley to Russia
Washington — When Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited the United States June 22, he flew past Washington and landed first in San Francisco, on the western side of the North American continent.
This travel itinerary spoke something of what Medvedev wanted to achieve on his first visit as Russian president to the United States.
San Francisco is just north of “Silicon Valley,” the home of many U.S. high-tech companies. Medvedev is seeking help from Silicon Valley executives as he attempts to create Russia’s own high-tech center, which he envisions in the Moscow suburb of Skolkovo.
“I would like to have my visit be translated into full-fledged relations and into cooperation with those [Silicon Valley] companies," Medvedev said at a reception hosted by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Medvedev wants to modernize the Russian economy by encouraging information technology, biotechnology, clean energy technology and nuclear technology startups and research and development. Medvedev received a pledge of support from Schwarzenegger, who said he will lead a high-tech trade mission to Russia to bolster the chances of Skolkovo’s success. The Russian president was escorted by the governor as he called on several Silicon Valley business leaders June 23.
In a meeting with Evan Williams, chief executive of Twitter, a social networking service, Medvedev opened an account and wrote in Russian, “Hello, everyone! I’m on Twitter. And this is my first tweet.” Twitter’s executives told Medvedev that the company plans to expand its service in the Russian language. Medvedev also met with entrepreneur Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple Inc., who gave the Russian president the latest version of the iPhone.
At Cisco Systems Inc., chief executive John Chambers announced that the company will invest $1 billion over the coming decade in Skolkovo and the Russian high-tech sector. In a detailed statement of its investment plans in Russia, Cisco says it “is committed to support the building of entrepreneurial capacity in Russia.” Cisco will increase the number of its networking academies in Russia from 133 to 300 to develop Russia’s technology talent and will put up $175,000 for the I-Prize, a competition for innovation in Russia.
JOBS’ ADVICE
After completing his visits to companies, Medvedev gave a speech at Stanford University, the academic hub of Silicon Valley. There, he revealed advice that Jobs had given him that morning.
“Unfortunately for us [in Russia], venture capitalism is not going so well so far,” Medvedev said. “No one wants to run the risk. It’s a problem of culture, as Steve Jobs told me today. We need to change the mentality.”
Medvedev’s visit was heralded by high-tech industry specialists. “There is something about the head of one of the most powerful states in the world going directly to Silicon Valley with an explicit appeal to investors that makes a powerful statement about today’s eroding boundaries that have separated industry, government and the nations that host them,” said Todd Khozein of Second Muse, an innovation consulting firm in Silicon Valley.
Yet, Robert Litan, a co-author of Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, cautioned that Silicon Valley is tough to replicate because it and other successful innovation centers were unplanned. He said that Silicon Valley started as the home of just two high-tech companies — computer maker Hewlett-Packard Company and Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation, which became Intel Corporation, the world’s leading semiconductor producer. “Those were accidents,” he said. “Nobody set out to plan them. Typically, it takes one or two very successful people to spark a cluster to take off.”
Michael Ducker, a market development specialist with business consulting company J.E. Austin Associates Inc., said that collaboration is at the core of successful innovation, and that it is not easy to create. “There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of attempts to do that,” he said. “You need to create an environment where it is easy to do business, and the bureaucracy and other stifling things in the economy are eliminated.” Ducker described innovation as an “organic” process that occurs through unfettered interaction between business and scientific communities. He said governments are most effective when they create conditions to “allow” this to happen, rather than try to “make” it happen.
Khozein said that Russia, working in collaboration with foreign partners, has the potential to bring forth “a new culture of innovation.”
In the United States, an important component of the collaboration that has resulted in high-tech business clusters has been academic institutions. The innovation center in the Boston area, known as the Route 128 cluster, started in a way similar to Silicon Valley. Scientists left their jobs in academia and opened their own companies. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently released a study documenting the impact this one school has had on innovation. The study says that, over the course of the school’s history, MIT engineers have started roughly 26,000 companies, which have employed more than 3 million people while racking up more than $2 trillion in sales.
While Medvedev may not have left California with a perfect blueprint for Skolkovo, Khozein called the Russian’s visit to the valley “an opportunity.” He said Russia will be able to learn much from Silicon Valley, but added, “I hope that Skolkovo’s eventual infrastructure will ultimately be inspired by, rather than strictly defined by, its Western predecessor.”
(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)
