News from Novosibirsk: Technopark is rapidly constructed while "Siberia" beats PSV Eindhoven

Technopark in Novosibirsk Research Center (LEDAS has recently become its member) is a somewhat small but real Skolkovo. Some people believe that the Center itself (Akademgorodok) is the best and much less expensive Skolkovo. But this is another story....

As in its early days, Akademgorodok is often visited by foreign guests: from Ashton Kutcher to Ralph Grabowski. Recently BBC published a 4-minutes clip about Technopark , see a screenshot below.

Also see below two pictures about a nice football event.

LEDAS Joins Siberian High-Tech Business Technopark

The Russian Government launched "Development of the High-Tech Oriented Technoparks" program which is informally considered as a project aimed at driving modernization and innovation in Russia. Novosibirsk Technopark founded in Academgorodok (a world-famous research center) is one of the largest development projects in the Eastern part of the Russian Federation powered by partnership between the government and private sector.

The resident status of Novosibirsk Technopark will allow LEDAS Ltd. to maximize the advantages of:
- top-priority use of Technopark services, including rental of premises;
- participation in support programs for Technopark residents;
- participation in innovative activity support programs, implemented in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation, the Novosibirsk Region and Novosibirsk;
- participation in Technopark development programs.

The new LEDAS status does not presume any changes in its ownership and will not violate its obligations to any third party.

There are several types of discussions regarding technoparks and around, such as:
- What is the correlation between technoparks and Skolkovo Innovation Zone (announced as the key Russian innovation project)?
- Can projects initiated by government (more generally – top down projects) but not by society (including single creative individuals) succeed?

Here are my short comments:
- Smaller organizations far from Moscow but supported by developed infrastructure (like in Novosibirsk, the city with about 2 million people) can be more effective than a multi-billion project with a political flavor very close to Moscow,
- Academgorodok itself is an example of a successful “top-down” project, although it was oriented to fundamental science and was founded in very different times of late 50th of ХХ century,
- Nevertheless, a technopark based on the Academgorodok infrastructure and fertilized by its numerous educated human resources with already achieved substantial business results has a lot of practical advantages compared with artificially generated Big Projects…

This was my very simplified opinion.

References (English): Novosibirsk Technopark website, Cloud Computing is the First Approved Project for the Russian Silicon Valley (my recent blog post).
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