OREANDA-NEWS. July 14, 2009. As Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama convene for an historic summit in Moscow, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) announced today the creation of a Russian Center for Technology and Innovation (CTI)—an initiative that the company believes will help to further advance Russia’s IT industry, while also strengthening ties between the two economies. The CTI, which will provide leading-edge research on technology trends and facilitate exchange of talents between Russia and the US in the field of IT and innovation, is scheduled to open in Moscow in October 2009 and will be timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Russia, reported the press-centre of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

“Russia is home to a large, highly talented pool of engineers and computer scientists. By opening the Center for Technology and Innovation, our hope is to help channel that talent, to pave the way to greater commercialization of the technologies that will change our world and drive the global economy forward, said Dennis Nally, Chairman of PwC.”

Previously, President Medvedev has signaled that finding ways to channel the country’s talent and to foster the commercialization of new technologies is a priority, and that strategic IT is a powerful growth driver for the country.

The Russian CTI will conduct research on: the IT market in Russia and the global potential for Russian technologies; best practices for empowering commercial use of the new IT; potential areas of cooperation between Russia and the United States around IT; regulation of innovation management; financing of research and scientific activities; small and medium enterprises and IT innovations; and higher education and talent management as it pertains to IT innovation.

Partnerships will be integral to the center’s long-term success in fostering technology innovation and commercialization. To this end, the center is planning to cooperate with Russian business associations in the field of IT, the venture capital industry in Russia, and with prominent high technology companies and organizations. PwC will also leverage its partnerships with the major business schools, such as Skolkovo in Russia to manage the exchange of talent and research.

PwC’s CTI, headquartered in San Jose, California, is widely known for the “Technology Forecast” publications, and for delivering insight on technology developments to clients and industry leaders around the world. In particular, CTI forecasts that three emerging technology trends—strategy management applications, semantic technologies, and cloud computing infrastructure—are set to change the game in enterprise IT and enterprise management. Enterprises that take advantage of these developments will likely be more agile, more in tune with their customers, and more profitable. Russian companies—in comparison to many Western companies that are trapped in legacy systems—are particularly well-positioned to adapt these new technologies.

A special focus of the CTI in Russia will be the interplay between management practices and IT. Information-driven management practices could be the linchpin in helping many small and medium enterprises in Russia evolve into globally competitive enterprises. PwC plans to produce a report on the topic, with a set of recommendations for Russian enterprises interested in adopting information-driven management paradigms.