Skolkovo 's Apology
Skolkovo: the road will be mastered by the walking
Mikhail Zakharov, <url>Any major project in Russia is criticized, often very sharply.
A few days ago, the Skolkovo innograd once again got it – this time from the Kommersant-Money magazine. The logic is clear – the prospects of the project are still unclear, although it is obvious that some funds will be allocated for Skolkovo.
Dissatisfaction with the project is understandable. The old academic environment, for example, traditionally criticizes any initiative from which it does not shine obvious profits. Some businessmen have not received an order, for example, for construction and also criticize the project. Someone was suspended from the implementation of the project – and so on, everyone will have their own complaints.
The criticism of Skolokovsky innograd in "Money" turned out to be extremely harsh. The project, according to the logic of the magazine, has turned or will turn into a purely development project in the near future, grant funding will be reduced, Skolkovo University is an unsuccessful project, independent expertise is not carried out, venture investments are not going.
A catastrophic attitude is, of course, fascinating, but the publication of "Money" seems simply biased. Before us is literally a catalog of claims of all interest groups, which are only found around the Skolkovo project. Partly, perhaps, they are fair, but collected in one text they leave the impression that they are not "zakazuhi".
When everything is piled up in a row, it is generally difficult to get rid of the feeling that the text had the task of "drenching" the project. Otherwise, it turns out that there are no successes in all areas at Skolkovo and practically no potential. Which is clearly not the case.
At least because the project, to put it mildly, is far from completion. It's hard to sum up what hasn't quite happened yet. According to the plan, construction work in Skolkovo should begin in the fall of 2012 and be fully deployed in 2013-2014. And the end was planned for 2020.
It is difficult to say how "powerful" the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology will be, but there are obvious reasons to say that this idea has already failed – a clear exaggeration. The Institute is even recruiting students – recently announced recruitment for 2013 in biomedical technologies. That is, to talk about an unambiguous failure based on Gazprom's intention to develop its own innovative project based on VNIIGAZ is at least a controversial assumption.
The business plan for the current year is being implemented, in general, the workflow is underway. There is definitely some kind of life and quite specific activity in the Skolkovo project. This is proved by more than half a thousand residents of innograd, whose number is gradually growing.
In the end, for some reason, businessmen are still signing agreements with innograd - we must think that they have reasons for this. And while there is motivation for business, it is premature to bury the initiative.
Then you need to understand what kind of ideology the Skolkovo project has. First of all, the project was conceived due to the obvious inability of Russian fundamental science to rebuild on some modern rails. Science has remained Soviet, solving the relatively narrow tasks of that militarized economy. One of the most advanced areas in Russian science has been and remains nuclear physics, with almost complete absence of research on bioengineering and other relevant areas in the rest of the world. In addition, Russian fundamental science is almost not engaged in "servicing" the needs of the "national economy".
In general, Skolkovo should be engaged in checking whether it is possible to transform Russian science into the science of the 21st century without any drastic steps to abolish old institutions (the same RAS, for example). In this sense, innograd is a purely experimental thing and even, as the initiators of the project said, a pilot one. And if successful, Skolkovo can become a model for other modern scientific centers.
And it seems that technologically this task is quite solvable. Specialists in the implementation of such projects have been invited and are being invited, from urban planners and architects of global stature to venture capital investment specialists and scientists. A plan for a modern city has been developed, preferential conditions for business and all sorts of household amenities have been promised, up to their own police.
Can the project fail if everything is so wonderful? Of course it can. Projects of this level, and with such funding, and such ambitions, inevitably become an object for attacks. Because in stories like Skolkovskaya, many different interest groups converge at once – apparatchiks, businessmen, scientists, the same architects. And there is a well-known desire to prove to the authorities that those who are engaged in the project "are doing everything wrong." The danger is that the bosses sometimes believe and begin to be disappointed either in the operators of the mega-project, or even in the project itself.
However, it is difficult to say unequivocally that everything has failed today in relation to the Skolkovo innograd. You can, of course, be ironic about the Russian Silicon Valley, as TV humorists do, but you can't say "nothing has been done" for sure. In this regard, the publication in "Money" turned out to be very strange. Well, take at least the fact that the main message of the text is pronounced by the famous political strategist Stanislav Belkovsky. A strange specialist in innovation and urban planning.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru14.09.2012