The Mixed commission for economic cooperation between the Russian Federation and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and, in particular, the working group on innovation were created a few years ago, so their participants meetings are held regularly. Netherlands remains one of the key trade partners of Russia. According to Olesya Baranyuk, the deputy director of the ITMO University Technopark, although lately relations between Russia and the Netherlands in global terms are not as actively developed as the parties would like, the cooperation continues in a number of fields. Meetings of Russian directors with the heads of the leading Netherlands companies are taking place, new investment projects in Russia are discussed. In particular, in the framework of the meeting the success stories of the joint Russian-Dutch projects were presented which can serve as a vivid example of the fact that the international innovative cooperation is a separate vector of development, which is not subject to outside influence.
"In the framework of cooperation with the Netherlands, the joint projects of Rusnano, Association of Innovative regions of Russia and other structures are implementing. For example, Rusnano invested in the MAPPER company, which eventually opened a joint venture in Russia which specializes in the latest technologies in the field of optoelectronics; the opening of the Russian representative office of the Russoft was held in Amsterdam. Netherlands is one of the leading European countries in the field of electronics, information technologies, shipbuilding, agriculture, and therefore, of course, there are reasons for cooperation," Artem Shadrin says, the director of Department of social development and Innovations of the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation.
The working group has no fixed structure so depending on the tasks whose solution must be found at the meeting, specific experts are invited. Thus, this time within the commission other than the chairman Artem Shadrin and Jasper Wesseling, the director of knowledge and innovations in the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, there were Vasily Kostyanovsky, the investment director of the Rusnano company, Ruslan Titov, the managing director of the Rusnano Department of nanotechnology centers, Ekaterina Solomina, the representative of the Association of Innovative regions of Russia, Ruud Niys, the director of the TheRockGroup, Paulina Dёll, the attache on innovations of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Yan Deksel, the program manager for venture capital investment of the Ministry of Economy of the Netherlands.
"Any innovation ecosystem needs globalization and therefore, it is necessary to establish international cooperation, interaction with Russia as well. Of course, you can start with small results, the local ones, but you should always think big and globally. In general, the Netherlands and Russia have much to learn from each other. For example, in Russia there is a huge human potential and a large number of interesting scientific developments and we, in turn, have some good business skills. We will always find a reason to interact," Yan Deksel says.
It is worth to mention that the working group on innovation of the Mixed commission for economic cooperation between the Russian Federation and the Kingdom of the Netherlands was created within the Intergovernmental commission on trade and economic cooperation with foreign countries. Today, this organization plays a significant role in the development of bilateral cooperation between Russia and other countries being an effective tool for solving problems of mutual interest. Through the work of the Commission investment and inter-regional cooperation is developing, transportation problems are solved, the interaction on innovations goes on a new level. The purpose of the Commission creation is achieving of effective cooperation between business and government at the global level.
"In January 2016, the Netherlands will become the chairman of the European Union Council, which implies the expansion of international contacts - with Russian companies as well. We are already actively working in this direction, to enable the ITMO University Technopark residents to go with their product on the Dutch market or launch a joint project with foreign colleagues so we could confidently move towards the internationalization of our scientists research. Paulina Dёll, the attache on innovations of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, during today's meeting listed a number of areas that are currently a priority for the Dutch side: optics, mechanics, bioinformatics, information technologies and agriculture. All of these areas are actively developing at ITMO University. In particular, there are companies that work on the Technopark base, which are involved in the creation of diagnostic test systems for the analysis of human genetic diseases (Parseq Lab company), there is also a number of organizations specializing in the developments in the field of optical and information technologies, and even agriculture. For example, the ChemLab company created hydrogel to increase the productivity of soil in arid climate. This meeting has once again shown that we are moving in the right direction and developing topical issues, following world trends," Olesya Baranyuk summarizes.