In a bid to step up innovation cooperation between Russia and neighboring Belarus, two government delegations met in Nizhny Novgorod on Wednesday to agree on the establishment of a Russian-Belarusian Business Accelerator and to further the finalization of a prospective inter-state technopark.
“This project, now officially known as ‘Concept of the Russian-Belarusian Business Accelerator,’ aims exclusively at helping to create small, innovative businesses, and nothing else. We have consciously shunned any political mottos and officialese,” said Andrei Shpilenko in an exchange with Marchmont News.
Mr Shpilenko, head of the Sarov Technopark and of the Russian Hi Tech Technopark Association, signed the agreements on behalf of the Russian side.
He added that the Council for Business Cooperation between the Nizhny Novgorod region and Belarus also approved the project on Wednesday and endorsed its being forwarded to the administration of the Union State of Russia and Belarus, a loose supranational entity, for further funding from the Union’s coffers.
The project did not emerge easily. “In 2011, a framework cooperation agreement was drafted with the Belarusian Ministry of Education,” Shpilenko said, paving the way to realizing what had initially been planned to be a joint youth innovation center program. However, lots of problems arose as the two sides progressed to the more ambitious idea of a business accelerator and a technopark.
“We had to admit that we speak different business languages, and have different views of what a technopark is and how it operates and commercializes innovation projects,” Shpilenko said. “Further harmonization of our approaches and language are still required.”
Upcoming steps include fine-tuning the concept while taking best practices into account, and the development of an inter-state program, called the Eurasian Innovation System. The latter aims to bring the two countries closer together and to provide future technopark residents with useful infrastructure.
