Innovation – "green corridor"

Russia has seriously set its sights on introducing innovations and nanotechnology. But for the development of an innovative economy, it is necessary to build not only the appropriate technological infrastructure, but also to form legal support that allows companies to confidently follow the innovative path.

Rusnano once initiated the idea of creating a so-called "green corridor" in the legislation of the Russian Federation, thanks to which barriers to innovation will be removed. Yuri Udaltsov, a member of the Board of Rusnano, Director for Innovative Development of the company, told RIA Novosti about what has already been done on this path and what is being prepared for implementation.

– We are discussing an innovation strategy in our country, but the problem is that there is still no understanding of what innovation is? What is the meaning of this word?– In principle, we never disagree in understanding what innovation is.

I think when people insist on a formal definition of innovation, they are either very deceitful, or they drive themselves into a dead end.

Basically, if you're doing something new, you're innovating. Of course, this is a very vague, but quite a definition. That is, if we just talk about innovation, then there are definitions, but there is no legally fixed option.

– Is he needed?– It seems to me that I don't need it in life.

However, in order for everyone to stop tormenting this question, maybe it makes sense to give. Although I am sure that such a definition will be very vague. Because tomorrow some inventor will do something that will not fit into any precise definition, which is why the whole world uses a vague and not accurate definition. Here it is more important to understand that innovation activity legally exists. For specific purposes, whether it is a tax or financial support tool, everyone will narrow this definition for himself to the class that he is going to support in this way. It seems to me that it will never be any other way. I am not aware of the operational definition of innovation in any country in the world.

– A year ago, A.B. Chubais raised the topic of the "green corridor" in legislation for the development of innovations and nanotechnologies in Russia. Rusnano has been actively engaged in this corridor all year. And what progress?– At one time, we started working with the relevant departments to amend legislation related to customs, export and currency control.

In all these areas, to one degree or another, there has been progress at the regulatory level. We are currently consulting on a whole range of further changes in legislation. Part of the work is related to the differentiation of responsibility in the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation.

It turned out that administrative cases are being initiated for a huge number of minor violations, and the entire legal machine is working to digest these sometimes rather formal cases. For example, when people are punished for not having time to issue a transaction passport before receiving the proceeds. That is, the revenue has arrived, the purpose of currency control has been realized, the revenue is on accounts in Russian banks, and they are fined for not having time to issue a transaction passport. On the other hand, when the conditions of electronic commerce develop, and the transfer is made by card, then there is simply no contract signed on paper.

There are things related to violations of the revenue identification certificate, when it does not matter what amount you received, but you need to come to the bank in a very short time and tell where the revenue came from. Now the deadlines are increasing, and responsibility for minor violations is being differentiated, because it is clear that it is extremely non-technological to run to the bank for every reason.

– Crazy bureaucracy?– And bureaucracy, and inconvenient, and then there are all sorts of inconsistencies when something went wrong, and you have it reflected in a different way in the transaction passport.

Now work is underway from different sides to change the entire system from this one. On the one hand, simplifying the transaction passport, on the other hand, changing and configuring the systems of interaction between regulators and currency control agents.

– When do you expect the process to be completed?– I expect that this year.

We are still struggling to reduce the number of documents that must be presented to the currency control every time for each transaction. On the other hand, I understand perfectly well that in such a large country as Russia, to adopt a law and come to a situation where everything is executed as written is a very long period. It begins with the fact that at first people do not know that the law has already been adopted, then they do not know exactly how to implement it, then it turns out that something has been changed in one place, and in another place they forgot about the same thing.

- Do you work with Rosstat?– Together with Rosstat, we are trying to understand how to measure innovation development itself better and more accurately.

But so far it is difficult for me to say anything about the prospects of this work. This case is objectively difficult.

We have carefully studied how statistics of this kind are built all over the world, it is always quite subjective, as is the very concept of innovation. And everything is based on interviewing, when people themselves say whether they are doing or not doing something new. In our country, such surveys have been conducted not very long ago, and therefore the quality of statistics suffers. Not because Rosstat is good or bad, but because it is objectively difficult to measure. Or very expensive.

– Quite a lot of barriers you are trying to break down…– We don't break, we build!

Breaking it is too easy. What we consider very important is the creation of new organizational, legal and contractual forms for venture funds and startups, respectively.

– Can you tell us more about what it is?– We hope that as a result of our joint work with the Ministry of Economy, two laws will appear with minor amendments to the Civil Code describing the new contractual form and the form of a legal entity.

All over the world, venture funds are contractual forms, not legal entities. But our law has no flexibility for the operation of venture funds, it is too burdened with regulation, it is focused on very large funds. It is almost impossible to make an intermediate distribution of profits in it, a lot of things cannot be done from what the world is used to in the field of venture investment. Accordingly, we are now trying to change this in accordance with international norms.

As for startups or project companies, several things are fundamentally important to us that are not currently in Russian legislation. Firstly, flexible filling of capital. It is clear that when you start a business, you do not know how much and when you will need money. But there must be confidence that the person with whom you entered the project will subsequently provide this money if you have reached the appropriate stage.  In our current legislation, when everything is tied to the adoption of specific decisions by the founders, registration and amendments to the charter, there are no guarantees. That is, we sort of agreed on the project, but then I changed my mind, didn't vote, and the bribes are smooth from me. Secondly, since debt financing is almost impossible for such companies, everything rests on the fact that organizations that are capable of achieving the project goal to varying degrees unite their efforts.  This means that a rather complicated agreement is being made between the parties involved in the project.

For example, I recently talked to an American firm that needs a large engineering project for a startup. The engineering firm is ready to take up work on account of the future share in this project.  There are complex relationships between future creditors, future buyers, investors, project organizers: how will the distribution of rights be decided in the future, because at an early stage the investor just gives money and does not really get into management, but then everything can change. And it is necessary to agree on a complex procedure in which all this will be taken into account.

It is necessary to negotiate so that the participants of such an agreement can be both the participants of the legal entity, and the legal entity itself and third parties who are interested in the project. This is not provided for in our legislation today.

– You have a fairly thick package of proposals for the "green corridor".– I wouldn't call it a package, because it's quite disparate material.

Now we are still thinking about strengthening migration legislation.

– What has already been done in this area?– Significantly simplified the procedure for highly qualified specialists.

But now the question of temporary staff arose. This is a typical form of work in engineering companies that install turnkey equipment from you and temporarily transfer the personnel who maintain this equipment to you until your staff learns all this. Such a form of relationship between companies in Russia is not generally accepted yet, although it is very common around the world. There is some legal uncertainty here: who do people obey at this moment? It seems that they must obey the law of the company where they arrived, but they are employees of another company. Our legislation currently does not regulate this in any way. Everyone gets out of legal conflicts in different ways.

We are also now trying to see what can be done with environmental and safety legislation in the interests of innovative companies.

– I still have one "funny" question, but many people are interested in it. What are the most typical problems faced by young innovators, innovative companies? From the point of view of legislation, what are they complaining about? What is being asked to change first?– Everyone always complains about two things.

The first is administration: tax, customs and so on. But it seems to me that people complain about what they think it makes sense to complain about. Everyone connected with this is complaining about the export situation.  A little less began to complain about the tax. But that's just my feeling, I haven't done any statistical research.

Everyone complains about the lack of support.  The fundamental difference with Western innovators is that we have not yet grown those generations who would perceive doing business as the basis of the economy. We have professional developers and there are some nugget businessmen. And this is not even a political, but rather a cultural phenomenon so far.

– But, probably, you will not get involved with the cultural problem?– I'm definitely not.

– You have drawn a picture, and how do you know that it is necessary to act this way?– You encounter a lot of things at once, you understand the rest from personal meetings and conversations.

And there are a lot of surveys conducted by various organizations now. But they all sin with inaccuracies, unfortunately. Here I came across in the vulgar year, everyone says: customs, customs. I began to ask the heads of innovative companies, and in 50% of cases out of 100% I found out that the problems they have in mind do not relate to customs at all, it is export control. And in a person's head, everything connected with crossing borders is considered customs. And he can't be blamed for the fact that we speak terminologically in different languages. But it is necessary to constantly get to the bottom of exactly which area is the real problem. And sometimes it happens that there is no problem. Sometimes just some official misunderstood something in the law, it is enough to give an explanatory letter.

– But such friendliness to companies is due to the fact that you understand that nanotechnology companies will not be able to develop with RUSNANO's help? Or because you like to clear up the rubble in the way of your projects?"Both.

We need to solve our tasks and help the market. These are interrelated things.