Are Russian innovations in demand? Yes, still!

The Russian Ministry of Education has launched a new "Innovation Space" platform where students and graduate students can present their projects, communicate with leading scientists, technology entrepreneurs and investors.

The potential of the Russian scientific and technical school is huge. Many can argue with this, referring to the ratings of world rankings of universities, where the leading Russian universities do not occupy the first places. But skeptics for some reason always forget that these universities are composed mainly on the basis of publications of scientific works in foreign publications. It is logical that if the magazine is published in the US or Europe, most of the publications will be from those scientific teams that are closer to them territorially and speak a common language in one language. In addition, many scientific journals are published directly at universities. So these ratings can not be applied in any way to prove that Russian scientists are not capable of developing new technologies.

But let's again put aside the empty lamentations of skeptics and turn to the facts. Are there any companies with Russian roots that successfully sell their products? And they do it abroad, that is, they compete in the world market. And it's even better if their head offices are still in Russia. Of course, there are a lot of such companies.

Ubiquitous information technology

The information technology boom has already passed and IT has given up the title of "the most innovative branch" to biotechnology. But, on the other hand, it means that IT has now grown out of childhood. It is enough to look at the list of the most expensive world corporations. Companies that make money on software production are neighbors with oil and gold mining giants.

So, on the market of information technologies, Russia takes quite an interesting place. To begin with, Russia is one of the four countries in the world where there is its own search engine that defeated Google. Moreover, the remaining 3 countries did this with the help of state support for local search engines. And only our Yandex, led by Arkady Volozh, managed to overcome Google in an honest competition. At the moment, Yandex is confidently holding 60% of the search market in Russia. After they became public companies and their shares began to be traded on the stock exchange, Yandex is increasingly looking to other countries where Google's positions are not so strong due to the characteristics of the local language. In particular, this is Turkey, where Yandex slowly but surely eats market share from the search giant.

And all this would be impossible, if not for the training of Russian engineers. Because the search for today, this is the most high-tech product, in which all the achievements of any other direction of IT are instantly collected. To create a high-quality search, we need a well-coordinated work of a huge number of specialists in semantics, mathematicians, programmers, cybernetics and machine learning specialists. And this is not counting the huge number of engineers who serve and optimize the search engine infrastructure. What, if not this, can be proof that the Russian scientific school can meet the highest world standards, if there is a worthy project.

But not one by Yandex is strongly Russian IT. There are a number of large Russian companies, like Mail.ru Group or Alawar, which successfully compete in the world market.

But if we talk about really high-tech IT, then we can not help recalling the St. Petersburg company "Center of Speech Technologies", which for 20 years has been creating products to recognize and synthesize speech and is rightfully considered one of the world leaders in this market. The company is known in fairly narrow circles, because it focuses its attention mainly on complex knowledge-intensive tasks, like recognizing damaged records or identifying a person by voice. The main clients of the "MDGs" are military and large corporations.

Another proof of the qualification of our scientific school is the company "Reasonable Solutions", which for three years has passed from a team of enthusiasts to a team of 90 professional developers of innovative products. They are engaged in big data technologies at the world level, cooperating with leading scientific institutions in Russia and Europe.

If we recall the "iron" side of IT, then the companies "RMT" and "INCOM" will become worthy examples. The first is among the top ten manufacturers of thermoelectric micro-cooling products in the world. And the second successfully produces and implements comprehensive security and monitoring systems.

In addition, there are a huge number of small companies that make their small products for global corporations, or they fulfill orders for customers from all over the world. And Russian programmers are appreciated all over the world for good work quality, unlike, for example, from Indians who take only a low price.

Old good physics

If you stop being modest, then the Soviet scientific school was the best in the world. A huge number of both fundamental discoveries and applied developments that determined the development of science in the 20th century was done in the Soviet Union. And, in spite of all the troubles, many great and successful innovative companies have grown on this ground.

One of the largest are "NPP" laser systems ", more than 20 years successfully working in the international market of high technologies. "Laser systems" develop innovative solutions for security, ecology, medicine, space and successfully sell their products around the world. These are tracking and identification systems, mobile complexes for environmental monitoring, airport vortex security systems, powerful lasers, as well as various security and access control systems. Among the unique projects - the world's first Alcolaser for the remote determination of alcohol vapors in the passenger compartment and the tracer of explosives and narcotics X-tracer.

Another company, "Diakont" develops tracking systems with high radiation resistance. Suffice it to say that the American General Electric is now re-equipping its power plants with Diaconta products. Already more than half of the capacities of the US energy giant are monitored with the help of the equipment of the Russian company. In addition to General Electric among customers: American Westinghouse, French Areva and Electricite de France (France), Finnish Fortum (Finland), our "Concern" Rosenergoatom ". And of course, Diakont, constantly develops new equipment for nuclear power.

Young and audacious biotechnology

Russia does not lag behind even in the youngest and fastest growing industry - biotechnology.

The most fashionable trends and biotech - personalized medicine and preparations on the basis of cellular, gene and postgenomic technologies are actively developing in the "Institute of Human Stem Cells". The company has been developing since 2003 and in 2009 even successfully entered the stock exchange. The activity of HSCI covers five main areas of modern biomedical technologies: regenerative medicine, biosecurity, medical genetics, gene therapy, biopharmaceuticals (within the framework of the international partnership program "SynBio"). HSCI owns the largest in Russia bank for the personal storage of stem cells of umbilical blood Gemabank®, and also the bank of human reproductive cells - Reprobank® (personal storage / donation). The company also regularly organizes forums and symposia for the development of the scientific community of bioengineers in Russia.

As for other aspects of medical technologies: the production of medical equipment and pharmacology, here Russian manufacturers successfully equip all Russian medicine with quality diagnostic tools and medicines that are certified according to world standards. Constantly the development of new drugs and diagnostic devices that help doctors recognize anxiety symptoms earlier and treat them more effectively.

There are problems, but they can be solved

Of course, the above does not mean that Russian science has no problems at all. They are, as in the whole world. But one of the most important now is some loss of young scientists when trying to commercialize their developments. To do this, the "Innovation space" platform is launched - so that each author of future development clearly understood what to do next, he could get advice from venerable professors, successful technology entrepreneurs and investors.