There is no sense of the synergetic effect of cooperation in the Russian economy

The heads of regional governments and representatives of innovative enterprises participated in the discussion. They used the meeting to define the primary mechanism for increasing the domestic economy’s ability to compete by implementing a cluster policy: exchanging experience, information and technology, joint projects, and training competent administrators that have the necessary qualifications and are capable of fostering working relationships between the enterprises and organizations that make up each cluster.

“When you’re making a piece of equipment, you need to order components from Malaysia, and then complete the manufacturing operation in Finland… Even though you’d like to do it in Zelenograd. Learning about world-famous companies is simple, but no one knows about new Russian enterprises and their projects,” said Alexander Rats, Director of the Dubna Cluster Development Center, laying out the shortcomings of Russia’s engineering capability and communications system.

Elena Gilyazova, Deputy of the Legislative Assembly of Perm Region, stated that there really is no sense of the synergetic effect of cooperation in the Russian economy. By stimulating and motivating enterprises to practice cooperation and outsourcing, the government will signal them to begin organizing those processes themselves. The regional authorities must also actively participate in the development of clusters, and train competent administrative teams at the local level. A cluster, however, is still an institution founded on public/private partnership. Effective managers are also needed within the clusters themselves in order to implement large-scale joint projects. The participants in the meeting identified the main obstacles to forming innovation clusters and the tasks that must be completed for them to develop in Russia.

The first step towards realizing innovative plans in a working format outside the forum was a proposal by Yury Vasiliev, CEO of SEZ “Zelenograd”. “On May 24th–25th of this year, we suggest bringing the various clusters’ teams together to begin a dialogue and share experience. This event will probably be built around addressing different topics and projects”, Vasiliev said in his closing remarks to the discussion group.