Energy and raw material exports will go up. But where is the modern Russia?
Russia is neither Moscow nor St. Petersburg. Russia is neither very safe nor very violent. You could say that Russians drink a lot of vodka, or that the young generation drinks only bottled branded water. It’s about high fashion or grandmothers wearing 50 year-old glasses. Russia is so diverse that we can only cover some dimensions of the country and its culture. But as we do, we should try to avoid the black and white approach. Because the new Russia has all colours, even some that we haven’t seen before.
One thing we can be sure of: Russia’s economy will grow faster than that of the EU or US. Why? The very simple answer is that the consumption of energy is growing, even as we try to reduce consumption. Russia will export raw materials and energy, and become a rich and wealthy nation. The middle class already exists, and is looking and travelling over the border more and more. Money is more evenly distributed than in many other oil and gas countries (except Norway), so the key question is will there be something else other than low-value chain exports and high value imports?
For this magazine, we have interviewed dozens of experts, some interested in and some deeply attached to Russia. The motto of Konsu, the publisher of the magazine, is “in Russia with love”. Through that kind of attitude, we try to understand where the country is going. We want to avoid the politics; we are not specialists, so would rather focus on business and people.
The Soviet Union used to be a military superpower. The new Russia is a superpower in raw materials. The post-Soviet managers are international, well-educated, and have good self-confidence, but only partly. When it comes to developing and commercialising new innovations, few have faith in that. We asked several business people whether they believe that Russia will become a superpower of innovations, but we didn’t meet any. It’s really new and radical to think of Russia as a cluster of ‘superbrands’ and hi-tech innovations. But as a former CEO in a leading Finnish export company said 20 years ago, there is no sense in even thinking of exporting something smaller than an elephant from Finland. But things can change rapidly. Today Finland is a real hi-tech country exporting and running global businesses selling everything from elephant-size to nano-size products.
We wanted to find the next generation of talented Russian innovators and entrepreneurs, so we travelled to Skolkovo, a futuristic startup business park about 30 minutes’ drive from the centre of Moscow.
Skolkovo’s aim is to create favourable conditions for the innovative process. Scientists, designers, engineers and businesspeople work together with participants of educational projects to implement new technologies and a generation of world-class competitive developments.
Most people (even many Russians) think that the whole project is doomed to fail, but we have seen in practice how such a miracle happens. In less than 10 years, Finland has become a closely followed and superhot start-up location on a par with Silicon Valley, Berlin and Israel. So just what is needed for this? In our experience, you first need entrepreneurs. Different, innovative, multi- talented, hard-working, and open people, who want to create something really extraordinary; without any limitations, with a ‘can do’ attitude and on a global scale. Tetris is perhaps one of the first global digital games born in Russia, so why wouldn’t it be possible to create the next Angry Birds in Russia? Russian people have a sound understanding of creative culture and that is where the hottest ideas come from. They don’t come from the headquarters of global companies based in London or New York. They always come from places that think and act radically.
We believe that Russia will be the next place for innovations. But not without building a new open culture. And this will be a bit painful. Changing the top- down culture to something more modern will take time. But again it’s up to the people and teams to make the change.
We have selected and interviewed the following people to try to understand the change. Timo Soininen is an entrepreneur, a global ‘rock star’ in building a social game, before the category had even been thought of, from zero to 7 million weekly users and over €45 million in revenues. Timo is extremely keen on building new business in Russia and visited some key places there with us. Then we have an example of the society of young international businesspeople, Anna Nikina, born in Russia but lived in Finland most of her life, studying and working in many countries and now coming back to Russia to build the new Russia. She opened the doors to the exciting Skolkovo project. Pekka Viljakainen is the western voice in Skolkovo, acting as advisor to the President of Skolkovo. He is not a typical big corporation guy, but rather a ‘bulldozer’, who wants to make significant change in the Russian business culture. We had a chance to discuss with Sergey Kurilov, CEO of Skolkovo Technopark. After meeting him, there could no longer be any question about whether the new economy will be born. Of course it will. It’s just going to take a little more time than expected or is acceptable for his bosses.
Our aim is to spread the message that Russia wants to and will change. And there are more opportunities there than probably anywhere else on our planet.
Today Konsu is the leading partner in start-up services for international companies establishing business in Russia and Ukraine. We have offices in 2 technology parks, Lappeenranta and St. Petersburg, and now we are building cooperation with Skolkovo. We support companies establishing business, provide legal consultancy and build world class financial processes and practises.
Establishing business in Russia and Ukraine arise many questions such as: what should be the operation mode; which authorities need to be notified; do I need a juridical address; how can I repatriate the profit; how to obtain work permit - just to begin with.
You can concentrate on your business idea and leave establishment issues to us: our strong presence in the region combined with knowledge of international law ensures that your business unit will be set up in a most effective manner.
How Konsu can help in starting up your business in Russia and Ukraine:
Konsu Magazine (.pdf file)