These are our St. Petersburg innovations…
St. Petersburg icicles were afraid of nanotechnology
The city cannot boast of serious innovations yetDaniil Borisov, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 22.05.2012
St. Petersburg is formally considered one of the most innovative cities in Russia – in terms of the amount of investments and the pace of cluster development in the country, it occupies the second position after Moscow, and in the world ranking it is on the 73rd line. However, even the St. Petersburg authorities admit that the city is still very far from the status of the Russian Silicon Valley, and the local economy is in no hurry to get on innovative rails.
The issue of innovative development of St. Petersburg was once again raised at a recent meeting of the city government. The head of the Committee on Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade Yevgeny Elin reported to the members of the government on the progress of the implementation of the city innovation program. The volume of financing through Rusnano has already exceeded 5 billion rubles, another 1.5 billion rubles. The city received it from the Skolkovo Foundation. The funds were spent on subsidizing the purchase of technological equipment by enterprises, compensation of interest on loans. The money was also spent on retraining of personnel, reimbursement of R&D costs, certification of quality management systems.
However, despite the serious financial injections of the last four years, the city cannot yet boast of any significant innovations. Perhaps the most striking example of state support for the introduction of innovative technologies is the development of a system to combat "icicles". At one time, Governor Valentina Matvienko, concerned about the president's order to support the sphere of innovation, offered to cut icicles, which cause a lot of problems to citizens in winter, with a laser. The idea did not catch on, but officials decided to concentrate their efforts on finding a high-tech method to solve this problem. A competition was held among innovators and an eco-friendly roof insulation project was selected. According to this technology, 835 city attics were insulated, for which the city spent 872 million rubles. It has not yet been possible to test the effectiveness of the technology due to the low snow this winter. Nevertheless, now the officials responsible for innovation regularly cite this project as an example of their effective work.
The new governor, Georgy Poltavchenko, who has not yet managed to make an enemy in the face of the St. Petersburg climate, the innovative achievements of the city are not very impressive yet. "A lot of work is being done, but only 2.5% of the products of St. Petersburg enterprises are considered innovative. This figure should alert: with such a percentage, it is difficult to call the city's economy innovative. One of the problems is in the implementation of scientific developments. I think we need to create some kind of special structure for bringing innovative products to the market," the governor said. Now there is no separate city government body that would be engaged in the introduction of innovations – the committee for economic development, industrial policy and trade is engaged in this. Apparently, in the near future a separate structure will be allocated from it, which will deal only with innovations.
The Skolkovo Communication Center, which is scheduled to open in the fall on the territory of the Institute of Refrigeration and Biotechnology of the St. Petersburg National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics, is also designed to help introduce innovations in St. Petersburg. Viktor Vekselberg, president of the Skolkovo Foundation, promised to allocate 25 million rubles for its creation.
Meanwhile, in the wake of interest in high technologies, especially those starting with the prefix "nano-", business representatives themselves tried to introduce new products to the market. Protective nanocoats for cars, nanocosmetics, nanoslubs and even nano fertilizers are just a small list of what entrepreneurs are already actively offering to St. Petersburg residents.
However, even if we exclude from this list products that have a very distant relation to nanotechnology, only a small proportion of the remaining products are developed in St. Petersburg. So far, the vast majority of high-tech solutions promoted on the St. Petersburg market are of foreign origin.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru22.05.2012