“Give the Green Light to Startups!”: a Lecture by the President of Skolkovo Held at SUSU

A lecture by the Director of education programs of Industry 4.0 from Moscow School of Management Skolkovo, Pavel Bilenko, was held for students of South Ural State University.

The employee of the School of Management shared his many-years-long experience in the sphere of industrial projects with students.

“We are working with universities, with educational projects and programs, with professional educational institutions in order to exchange experience. In the last 10 years we accumulated a lot of experience and decided to transform it into educational programs. For example, we organize lectures for United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), for KAMAZ, for large oil and gas companies, and for universities so that together we could determine the strategy of digital transformation. This will help the university to understand what can be done in order to become competitive. We are always open for communication and for joint creation of intelligent products.”

Also, Pavel Bilenko talked about his lecture prepared for SUSU students.

“I prepare each lecture individually, depending on the audience. Today we spoke about how young people can become founders of a technological project – a startup or a small innovative enterprise. I talked about the way that such projects are implemented by different people not only in Russia but all around the world. About what platforms they use and how they get developed with the use of prototyping means. Of course, it requires a more detailed discussion, and two hours were not enough. But I tried to draw students’ attention to the main tendencies and availability of such platforms where you can switch from an idea to high-tech business; and, of course, I tried to excite the young peoples’ interest and a strive for knowledge. It is important that they’ve started to delve into this subject, search for more information and try. I hope that at least some part of the students who attended the lecture will consider the international experience in more details and want to make their own technological project which will change the life of large companies.”

When summarizing the results, the employee of the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo noted that there are no obstacles for implementing technological projects.

“Together with students we came to a conclusion that nowadays the country does not lack investments or large companies’ interest in startups. But there surely is a lack of technological projects which are to be created by teams that can create such projects. It would be wonderful if someone from the students, who attended the lecture, in the future would lead the development of such projects. I love the Ural because there a lot of young teams here which create outstanding projects. I can admit that the Ural is the leader by the number of companies with digital products and services for the industry. Our goal is to support this tendency, put maximum efforts so that in 2-3 years the number of such teams would considerably increase.”

Head of the Process Department, Anton Nurkenov, talked about the importance of students’ meeting with the lecturer.

“First of all, this is experience from real-life examples, accumulated on the basis of one’s personal work and participation in projects. Moreover, this meeting is useful for us because the main problem of education is remoteness from enterprises. Pavel Nikolaevich provides specific examples of work and implementation of projects as applied to digital production at enterprises of the mechanical engineering branch and resource branch related to oil and gas. He does not just speak about it but demonstrates on-site videos, layouts and pictures. This is some kind of concentrated point-source information which allows a student to form his opinion objectively enough.”

Besides, the Head of the Process Department, Anton Nurkenov, pointed out the today’s topics of interest for students.

“They are concerned with the fact that many enterprises have some kind of ‘rigidity’, and more often this effect originates from leadership of the enterprises. Students are worried that their working energy and enthusiasm will be crushed by conservatism of such companies. I think that we should organize such meetings more often because they really are helpful not just for students but also for teaching staff of the university.”

At the end of the lecture, students had the opportunity to ask all questions of interest concerning not only the lecturer’s experience but also possibilities of the young teams.

Marina Koviazina; photo by: Oleg Igoshin
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