Details of one of the priority projects of the Ministry of economic development was announced at a press-conference in TASS on 14 July 2016. The government of the Russian Federation will select 30 promising companies and bring them into global leaders. At the thought of the Ministry, in the future, these companies will become the locomotives of development of high technologies in the country.
Today the Russian innovative export is less than 1% of turnover, it is about $10 billion dollars. Upon completion of the project, by 2020, innovative exports will grow by 4 times by no less than 15 leading companies.
In this case, 2 companies will have at least $1 billion sales per year, and at least 10 companies over $500 million dollars / year.
The programme implementation period – June 01, 2016 – December 30, 2020.
The project aims to support medium enterprises of Russia. “We have not seen for a long time the average business, just start-UPS and large companies”, – explained the direction of the efforts Oleg Fomichev, Deputy Minister of economic development of the Russian Federation. “We understand looking at global markets that in this category of companies we can rely for entering the high-tech markets”, he said the focus of the project.
According to the Director of the Institute of innovation management of HSE Dan Medovnikov, in world practice such projects have a history starting from the 1980s. There are well-known projects to support medium-sized business in the UK, Germany, Taiwan, Korea, South Africa, China, etc. Striking result of these efforts was, for example, the project alibaba.com. In 2015, Kazakhstan has selected 28 companies and has launched a similar project.
Before starting the project the ministry provided preliminary research. It interviewed companies and government agencies to understand what support is required and what companies at this stage stops to develop high-tech sector. According to acting General Director of the Russian venture company Evgeniy Kuznetsov, “these companies lack understanding of their global potential… If the company is internally ready for it – no problems”. In addition, he said: “As a rule, these companies need investment money and support in access to export markets.”
The research base of the project amounted to 200-250 companies. Companies already have experience in the use of innovative infrastructure in the form of clusters, technology parks, etc. The study was conducted with the involvement of the Higher school of Economics and PwC.
In fact this project represents, according to O. Fomichev, “mode of green corridor”, which will be provided in favor of Russian private high-tech companies to lead on a global level in their segments. In response to the amount of investment from the state will require such a project, the Deputy Minister found it is difficult to answer, because it is not evaluated. Direct funding is not intended here. The emphasis is on the return means.
As green corridor the goverment will make a set of influences. Among them, according to Artem Shadrin (Ministry of economic development) are following:
- Additional organizational support
- subsidies, warranties and credit concessions
- subsidies for R & d
- help with special programs of export centre
- participation in business missions and political support for exports
- Motivation, orientation on the rise with the help of consultants
- Administrative barriers cancellation
- Educational and scientific assistance
- Curation
Each project will have the list of the individual Trustees from the Ministry of economic development, Russian venture company and development Institute.
The selected companies, in their turn, will be tasked to achieve a certain performance of KPI by 2020. If someone can not cope with the task – he will be replaced by other people.
