Skolkovo Innovation Center

The Skolkovo Innovation Center is a high technology business area at Mozhaysky District in Moscow, Russia.

[1][2][3] As corporations and individuals register their residency in the city, they can receive financial assistance to realize their proposed projects and ideas.

In March 2010, Vekselberg announced the necessity of developing a special legal code for Skolkovo and emphasized the need to offer a tax holiday lasting 5–7 years.

[6] In April 2010, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev charged the government with working out legal, administrative, tax, and customs regulations for Skolkovo.

According to this decree, specialized and highly skilled foreign nationals who arrive in Russia with the purpose of securing employment at Skolkovo will be granted a visa for a term of up to 30 days.

When the program is over foreign startups may apply for Skolkovo resident status on order to start receiving tax benefits.

Daria Shunina, Head of the Skolkovo Softlanding Program says: "Our main mission is to help foreign companies to expand to the Russian market or at least to learn more about it".

[24] In July 2012, IBM and five Russian innovation companies: the Skolkovo Foundation, Rusnano, Rostelecom, Russian Venture Company[25] and ITFY, signed a collaboration agreement to foster a culture of applied research and commercialization and attract key talent and investment from around the world in the area of microelectronics.

[26] The agreement will give the Electronics Technology Center access to IBM's intellectual property for chip design.

The cloud will help unite Russia's dispersed microelectronics development teams and provide access to advanced technologies and best practice and foster global collaboration.

The agreement was signed by Victor Vekselberg, President of the Skolkovo Foundation; Anatoly Chubais, CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board of Rosnano; Alexander Provotorov, President and Chairman of the Management Board of Rostelecom; Igor Agamirzian, CEO of Russian Venture Company; Evgeny Babayan, Chairman of the Board, ITFY; Leonid Svatkov, CEO ITFY; Bruno Di Leo, Senior Vice President IBM; and Kirill Korniliev, Country General Manager, IBM Russia & CIS.

The ETC will initially focus on microelectronics design; however in the future it may be extended to other fields where cloud computing can support collaborative development projects.

The educational plan of OpUS includes lecture series, master classes and courses by leading scientists, thinkers and practitioners.

[31] International partners include: The Skolkovo Center publishes annual reports about the project, showing some data from their own sources.