The Skolkovo Foundation currently works in five areas, so-called clusters: biological and medical technologies, information technologies, the Energy Efficiency and Energy cluster, nuclear technologies, as well as telecommunications and space technologies. In the six months since the founding of the fund, three clusters have entered the active phase of work. What the fund is doing now and how the clusters will develop in the coming years, the heads of the areas told Kommersant.

Alexander Turkot, executive director of the information technology cluster of the Skolkovo innovation center:

— Our cluster is just a kind of shell, a structure aimed at generating, stimulating and supporting new projects. It is important to understand that there will be only seven of us in the cluster, including assistants and secretaries. These are, first of all, people who are involved in different stages of the life of projects: from selection to launching companies.

Today we have several joint projects in our portfolio, which we hope to launch this year - there are four in total. We are talking about projects related to cloud computing; we also have a joint project with ABBYY, a text visualization project with Timur Bekmambetov’s Bazilevs company and with the MIT Enterprise Forum. We specifically selected projects of different formats that would cover, on the one hand, the widest possible range of areas within IT, and on the other, build certain models for working with projects in the future. We are ready to give money for these projects. Of course, we have many more projects under consideration. Some of them are completely self-sufficient and do not require direct funding - we plan to support them by assigning the best Skolkovo participant status, thus providing a set of benefits provided by the law on Skolkovo participant status.

We plan to launch projects with major Western companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Cisco in the near future. Cooperation with large Russian companies has so far been less active; I would call this a skeptical and cautious attitude on their part. However, I think that the more people come to us, the faster this skepticism will pass. If there is success, then caution will go away. Well, success largely depends on the systematic efforts and interest of the state.

In the future, ten years from now, it seems to me that clusters should not exist at all. The fact is that the history of their creation is not exactly artificial, but still they are created for some primary phase, their function is to become a catalyst, launch processes, work out models and leave, allowing the business to continue to develop independently. The interest of companies in participating in Skolkovo is not only because of the benefits provided by the state. There are enough forms of interaction, including direct financing of projects. I believe that the fund's involvement should decrease over time. We need to move away from the current model, when we can finance up to 50%. Over time, the share of our support should decrease due to the coming to us of private money - venture funds, investment banks. Ideally, after a few years, our projects should work with market money, without a fund.

Igor Goryanin, executive director of the biological and medical technologies cluster at the Skolkovo innovation center:

- Developed countries devote significant resources to the development of biotechnology - supporting the development of new methods of treatment, crops, animals and forests, bioenergy, bioremediation, the use of marine organisms and other underwater resources.

Developing countries are choosing promising biotechnological areas. In China and India, for example, leaders in the production of drugs that have lost patent protection are emerging; Brazil ranks second after the United States in the production of bioethanol.

Since biotechnology in the pharmaceutical industry is little developed in Russia, we decided to focus our efforts in several specific areas: systems medicine, biopharmaceuticals, industrial biotechnology and biomedical informatics.

The global pharmaceutical industry in its current form is not sustainable for several reasons. Some are due to a poorly designed business model, others due to a lack of understanding of fundamental pathobiology and toxicobiology. As a result, the percentage of drugs that do not work is approximately 99%. In addition, many patents will expire by 2015, which will further weaken the financial basis for the industry.

As a result, a situation arises where Skolkovo has the opportunity to take advantage, on the one hand, of expired patents for chemical substances, and on the other hand, hire highly qualified specialists. With these two pillars, we have a unique opportunity to create competitive research in drug development over the next five to ten years.

At Skolkovo Biotech we offer support for interdisciplinary programs focused on creating a competitive pharmaceutical industry in Russia. They will have innovative business models and corporate structures, including research models, that will build on the successes of current industrial experience.

Investments will be made in new integrative sciences and technologies directly related to the identification of targets in the field of chronic diseases, systems understanding of side effects and toxicology, as well as the development of diagnostic tools for patient stratification. Ultimately, our goal is to make Russia independent in the pharmaceutical sector, from drugs to production.

Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy Program - develop alternative approaches in bioenergy and bioremediation. Recycling of waste and by-products from various industries in combination with the production of energy in various forms - from hydrogen, algae, bioethanol, biobutanol, methane and electricity.

There is also a direction in biomedical informatics. Its main goal is to develop and use new computing technologies to extract and generate knowledge from vast amounts of biomedical data, identify gaps for computational experiments, generate hypotheses and rationally design, perform and coordinate biological and clinical experiments to improve our knowledge of human diseases. The knowledge gained through the program will be used to develop personalized, safe medicines.

The business climate does not support the innovative economy in Russia, because customs and tax legislation in the field of biotechnology is either non-existent or prohibitive. In addition, there is low demand for biotechnological innovation in industry due to long payback periods and high capital costs. This has led to Russian talent leaving Russia over the past two decades, leaving the biotech industry uncompetitive.

Mikhail Slobodin, Advisor to the President of the non-profit organization "Development Fund for the Center for the Development and Commercialization of New Technologies":

— Skolkovo is, first of all, about shaping the environment. Our plans are to support projects, first of all, connecting universities and teams and bringing their ideas to a commercial result. In other words, we must create a platform for the birth of the final product.

Now we are looking for projects that may be interesting and useful to the state and business. The problem is that innovations are formed on their own, and not in response to demand, and our task is to see the need. We have involved a large number of specialists in this work and, together with MacKenzie, we plan to structure so-called subclusters with which we will work.

We look at how and what our universities are currently working on. We have already looked at Moscow Energy University, MAI, MISiS, MISS, URFU, but identifying teams ready to present some kind of final idea, and even more so a product, turned out to be difficult. Mainly due to the decline in the overall educational level. Therefore, we understand that we need to attract Western scientists and professors who could help reverse this situation.

We also work with leading foreign companies. For example, we have an idea to create an R&D center with Siemens. He will study the operation of the Smart Grid system, which is now being actively implemented throughout the world. There are no analogues of such a center anywhere now. There are also plans for a Power Storage project - technologies that allow the accumulation and storage of electricity. In addition, we must organize so-called business incubators, which will allow us to bring ideas to the final product. This is a lot of work of searching, screening, nurturing and creating a certain environment.

Maria Petrova

Five components of innovation city