Where did the revenue of 44.6 billion in Skolkovo?
At Megamind, a lot of questions were caused by the article “The revenue of Skolkovo projects is growing faster than the plan . ” Since our company is a member of the Skolkovo IT cluster, I want to shed light on these numbers. I must say that if you understand the figures from the point of view of common sense (personally mine), then there is no such revenue, as there are no new jobs. Now let's understand in order.
How to understand "Created almost 13 thousand new highly skilled jobs."
The concept of "new jobs" in terms of common sense means that if there were no jobs before, and then they appeared, then these are "new" jobs. If in one place the workplace appeared, and in the other it disappeared, then new jobs did not arise. Right? In Skolkovo, already existing companies (they are called start-ups there) that existed before, are simply accepted, just before they were on their own and then became participants of Skolkovo. In fact, this is the movement of a highly qualified workplace in the country, but not the creation of a “new workplace”. We can also assume that the emphasis here is on the term “highly qualified”, but can you imagine that a firm that underwent a rigorous examination and was selected at Skolkovo had previously had employees working as janitors? Or were they unemployed before Skolkovo? Therefore, in reality, no “new” jobs, including highly qualified ones, in my opinion, create Skolkovo.
Now let's consider where in Skolkovo the revenue of 44.6 billion
In "Skolkovo" mainly take companies that already have a fairly well-developed product and have revenue. But so that they are engaged exclusively in research and its commercialization (these are mandatory conditions), all companies edit the charter, exclude trade and other activities not related to innovation from there. A company that does not have its revenues cannot exist in Skolkovo, therefore only about 20% of the participants received grants there. The rest live on their own revenues, some on external investments, and about half of them simply do nothing, because there is no money, and they are slowly leaving. Naturally, the company's revenues are not derived from the work that they do while in Skolkovo, but from the sale (from commercialization) of the term Skolkovo of innovative products that were developed prior to joining Skolkovo. The reports do not separately allocate revenue received as a reaction to the infusion of Skolkovo grants or revenue derived from projects that were developed while the company was in Skolkovo. Maybe this includes investments attracted as well - I don’t know, but investments are not revenue. That is, if, from the point of view of common sense, in their reports, Skolkovo should show what kind of proceeds the start-ups received in response to the infusion of grants or from the sale of the products they developed as members of Skolkovo (and not before), there is no such record at Skolkovo and such figures are not published. In other words, if the reader wants to get an answer to the natural question about the profitability of Skolkovo investments, then he will not find such an answer.
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The second caveat is that Skolkovo's revenue is growing not only because they create a new product and sell it, but mainly because they accept new members who already have revenue and include this revenue in their annual reports. Therefore, it is natural that the number of participants increases over time, and therefore, Skolkovo’s annual revenue grows.
Thus, in fact, “The revenue of the project participants” is the annual revenue of the firms that were accepted into Skolkovo and the main part of which they received before that. How much it has grown or decreased during their stay at Skolkovo is unknown, i.e. this revenue cannot be considered as a merit of Skolkovo and cannot be indicated in Skolkovo reports, because it misleads the reader.
Let us now analyze what “Innovations” are. From the point of view of Skolkovo, this is not just a product that was not previously on the market or different from what it was, but a development in which there is a scientific novelty. For example, if you received a dozen patents on a product, from the point of view of Skolkovo this does not mean that this product is innovative. Skolkovo has its own understanding of innovation. When we first tried to join Skolkovo, I wrote a project to create a new series of industrial controllers, because we have been working in this market for a long time, we know it and understand that it will find demand. However, such a project was not accepted. Then I wrote a bunch of formulas, gave links to my published article in IEEE, where scientific novelty was clearly highlighted - and such a project was accepted. And the fact that no one will buy this product due to low profitability - they are not at all interested in them. Skolkovo believes that profitability is the problem of the manufacturer, not the developer, and they don’t discuss this topic at all, because the basic principle of Skolkovo is to develop a product and give it to an investor who must solve the problem of profitability.
There is still a very interesting nuance: firms like Microsoft, Apple, Google, when they were start-ups, would not satisfy the criteria of Skolkovo because they developed exclusively due to the commercial ideas and energy of their leaders, and the business in its infancy was based on known technologies and was not innovative in the sense of Skolkovo. Recall what Apple grew up with — even before its appearance, personal computers were produced by dozens of companies. Apple had no innovative ideas in the sense of Skolkovo - their success was based on user friendliness, design, and most importantly, the commercial core of Steve Jobs. There were no “new technologies, new research, new tools”, etc., see the list of “new” on the Skolkovo website sk.ru/foundation/itc/p/directions.aspx , i.e. there was no innovation in the sense of Skolkovo.
As for Google, Yahoo, Infoseek and even Yandex existed long before it. From the user's point of view, Google differed only in its sonorous, easily remembered name. This was the reason for their success, as well as the energy of the founders. But there was no innovation in the sense of Skolkovo. In any case, the Google user did not know anything about their innovations when he passed to them from other search engines.
More about one funny thing. In Skolkovo there is a template for applying for a grant. So, there you will have to paint what revenue you will get from the sale of an innovative product that has not yet been developed in a year, two, three, etc. to five after its development. If someone is engaged in business, he can laugh at it from the bottom of his heart. The fact is that in the Skolkovo grant committee from the very beginning there were well-known respected scientists, academics, and heads of state corporations, but there was not a single entrepreneur who would have ever organized his innovative business. Hence the desire to support projects in which there is a certain amount of science, despite the fact that everyone is well aware that the eternal problem of Russia was the inability to implement the results of Ph.D. and doctoral dissertations, because science does not use the concept of product profitability.
I also find it difficult to believe in the seriousness of the state’s intentions regarding Skolkovo, because the amount of money allocated to startups is ridiculously small — some officials and heads of state corporations have an annual income greater than the amount of grants issued to Skolkovo to all their participants for the year.
In general, the Skolkovo project is very necessary for Russia, we all have been waiting for it for a long time. But in this form, as it exists today, the effectiveness of public investment is extremely low. I think that in the existing conditions one of the 100 Skolkovo firms will be able to “break out into people”, but this figure could be increased to at least one out of ten. Fortunately, recently two entrepreneurs have appeared in the Grant Committee. I hope that over time they will become more, and Skolkovo’s policy and reporting will be more economically correct.
How to understand "Created almost 13 thousand new highly skilled jobs."
The concept of "new jobs" in terms of common sense means that if there were no jobs before, and then they appeared, then these are "new" jobs. If in one place the workplace appeared, and in the other it disappeared, then new jobs did not arise. Right? In Skolkovo, already existing companies (they are called start-ups there) that existed before, are simply accepted, just before they were on their own and then became participants of Skolkovo. In fact, this is the movement of a highly qualified workplace in the country, but not the creation of a “new workplace”. We can also assume that the emphasis here is on the term “highly qualified”, but can you imagine that a firm that underwent a rigorous examination and was selected at Skolkovo had previously had employees working as janitors? Or were they unemployed before Skolkovo? Therefore, in reality, no “new” jobs, including highly qualified ones, in my opinion, create Skolkovo.
Now let's consider where in Skolkovo the revenue of 44.6 billion
In "Skolkovo" mainly take companies that already have a fairly well-developed product and have revenue. But so that they are engaged exclusively in research and its commercialization (these are mandatory conditions), all companies edit the charter, exclude trade and other activities not related to innovation from there. A company that does not have its revenues cannot exist in Skolkovo, therefore only about 20% of the participants received grants there. The rest live on their own revenues, some on external investments, and about half of them simply do nothing, because there is no money, and they are slowly leaving. Naturally, the company's revenues are not derived from the work that they do while in Skolkovo, but from the sale (from commercialization) of the term Skolkovo of innovative products that were developed prior to joining Skolkovo. The reports do not separately allocate revenue received as a reaction to the infusion of Skolkovo grants or revenue derived from projects that were developed while the company was in Skolkovo. Maybe this includes investments attracted as well - I don’t know, but investments are not revenue. That is, if, from the point of view of common sense, in their reports, Skolkovo should show what kind of proceeds the start-ups received in response to the infusion of grants or from the sale of the products they developed as members of Skolkovo (and not before), there is no such record at Skolkovo and such figures are not published. In other words, if the reader wants to get an answer to the natural question about the profitability of Skolkovo investments, then he will not find such an answer.
')
The second caveat is that Skolkovo's revenue is growing not only because they create a new product and sell it, but mainly because they accept new members who already have revenue and include this revenue in their annual reports. Therefore, it is natural that the number of participants increases over time, and therefore, Skolkovo’s annual revenue grows.
Thus, in fact, “The revenue of the project participants” is the annual revenue of the firms that were accepted into Skolkovo and the main part of which they received before that. How much it has grown or decreased during their stay at Skolkovo is unknown, i.e. this revenue cannot be considered as a merit of Skolkovo and cannot be indicated in Skolkovo reports, because it misleads the reader.
Let us now analyze what “Innovations” are. From the point of view of Skolkovo, this is not just a product that was not previously on the market or different from what it was, but a development in which there is a scientific novelty. For example, if you received a dozen patents on a product, from the point of view of Skolkovo this does not mean that this product is innovative. Skolkovo has its own understanding of innovation. When we first tried to join Skolkovo, I wrote a project to create a new series of industrial controllers, because we have been working in this market for a long time, we know it and understand that it will find demand. However, such a project was not accepted. Then I wrote a bunch of formulas, gave links to my published article in IEEE, where scientific novelty was clearly highlighted - and such a project was accepted. And the fact that no one will buy this product due to low profitability - they are not at all interested in them. Skolkovo believes that profitability is the problem of the manufacturer, not the developer, and they don’t discuss this topic at all, because the basic principle of Skolkovo is to develop a product and give it to an investor who must solve the problem of profitability.
There is still a very interesting nuance: firms like Microsoft, Apple, Google, when they were start-ups, would not satisfy the criteria of Skolkovo because they developed exclusively due to the commercial ideas and energy of their leaders, and the business in its infancy was based on known technologies and was not innovative in the sense of Skolkovo. Recall what Apple grew up with — even before its appearance, personal computers were produced by dozens of companies. Apple had no innovative ideas in the sense of Skolkovo - their success was based on user friendliness, design, and most importantly, the commercial core of Steve Jobs. There were no “new technologies, new research, new tools”, etc., see the list of “new” on the Skolkovo website sk.ru/foundation/itc/p/directions.aspx , i.e. there was no innovation in the sense of Skolkovo.
As for Google, Yahoo, Infoseek and even Yandex existed long before it. From the user's point of view, Google differed only in its sonorous, easily remembered name. This was the reason for their success, as well as the energy of the founders. But there was no innovation in the sense of Skolkovo. In any case, the Google user did not know anything about their innovations when he passed to them from other search engines.
More about one funny thing. In Skolkovo there is a template for applying for a grant. So, there you will have to paint what revenue you will get from the sale of an innovative product that has not yet been developed in a year, two, three, etc. to five after its development. If someone is engaged in business, he can laugh at it from the bottom of his heart. The fact is that in the Skolkovo grant committee from the very beginning there were well-known respected scientists, academics, and heads of state corporations, but there was not a single entrepreneur who would have ever organized his innovative business. Hence the desire to support projects in which there is a certain amount of science, despite the fact that everyone is well aware that the eternal problem of Russia was the inability to implement the results of Ph.D. and doctoral dissertations, because science does not use the concept of product profitability.
I also find it difficult to believe in the seriousness of the state’s intentions regarding Skolkovo, because the amount of money allocated to startups is ridiculously small — some officials and heads of state corporations have an annual income greater than the amount of grants issued to Skolkovo to all their participants for the year.
In general, the Skolkovo project is very necessary for Russia, we all have been waiting for it for a long time. But in this form, as it exists today, the effectiveness of public investment is extremely low. I think that in the existing conditions one of the 100 Skolkovo firms will be able to “break out into people”, but this figure could be increased to at least one out of ten. Fortunately, recently two entrepreneurs have appeared in the Grant Committee. I hope that over time they will become more, and Skolkovo’s policy and reporting will be more economically correct.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/291302/
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