A leading authority on global innovation who designed and built national technology programs for countries as diverse as Russia and Abu Dhabi, Steven Geiger recently made a guest lecture at Moscow’s New Economic School on the common mistakes countries make when attempting to create innovation cities, and how to best avoid them (see video).
“I am concerned about the future of innovation in Russia,” said Geiger, who steered Skolkovo through two difficult start-up years as COO before resigning in late 2012.
“Innovation is probably one of the most complex undertakings for a country, but there’s hardly any other single endeavor that has more impact on the future,” Geiger explained in his lecture.
“While chasing technology, the first mistake by far for a country is to say: ‘We must be like Silicon Valley.’ Everyone looks across the ocean, they see palm trees and Google and Facebook and companies that are worth more than Gazprom and they say: ‘We want that, we have to be like that.’ But the problem is that they tend to copy blindly a model. That’s a mistake because Silicon is not a physical place they can copy, it’s a culture, it’s part of the American culture, it’s part of the immigrant culture, of the individualism of America. And it’s probably impossible to copy a culture,” Geiger believes.
As a recent possible corruption case at Skolkovo illustrated many of the points he raised, Geiger told East-West Digital News that “it is essential that such innovation projects remain the vanguard of transparency and integrity, where merit not murkiness prevails.”
“Corruption has long been a scourge limiting Russian potential. The beauty of projects like Skolkovo is that they offer a chance to bypass entrenched practices with new business and social models,” he believes.
When asked about the future of Skolkovo, the US specialist warned: “Far too much of Russia’s political capital has been invested for these high-profile projects to fail. Yes, they have problems but solutions exist. My concern is that political infighting may lead to their scuttling.”
“Nothing will determine Russia’s fortunes in the 21st knowledge economy more than its successful embrace (and mastery) of efficient innovation and global collaboration”, Geiger concluded.