OREANDA-NEWS. November 3, 2011. At the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO Campus the first meeting of the Innovation Directors Club created with participation of the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO, the Institute of Innovation Management at the National Research University Higher School of Economics and with the support of Ernst & Young took place. Oleg Fomichev, Deputy Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, opened the first session of the Club.

The Innovation Directors Club was created in order to support implementation of innovation development programmes. Its core objective is to promote solution of inter-industry organizational, communicational and management issues in the introduction of innovations, which could enhance competitiveness of the Russian economy. The Club’s work form assumes regular meetings in order to work out consolidate position on the issues of common interest and to formulate propositions for institutional environment improvement. "There is a R&D boom in the country. Having understood that just adoption of technologies doesn’t pay off; companies activate their own research and elaborations.   However the professional society isn’t quite consolidated yet. The form of a club is intended to compensate for existing spaces in communication and to help with solution of common challenges", - said Dan Medovnikov, Deputy Director of the Institute of Innovation Management at the National Research University Higher School of Economics.

More than 100 participants of the Club from the largest Russian and world companies attended the first meeting. Beside them also representatives of RUSNANO, Russian Post, Avtovaz, Ernst & Young, United shipbuilding company, Aeroflot, Russian Helicopters, Rosatom, Rostelecom and the Russian Ministries’ representatives took part in the session.

The idea of the Club appeared more than half a year ago. In March the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO at the initiative of the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation and with the support of Ernst & Young held the educational course “Forming of an innovation development programme for state corporations” for 40 people who were strategy and development top-managers in companies with state interest.  Within the course the participants worked on propositions for tools of preparation and implementation of innovation programmes development, which later were considered by the Ministry of Economic Development and the Executive office of the President of the Russian Federation representatives. World professors and practicians of the leading international corporations in the sphere of innovation development shared their expert opinion with the participants. After that the Institute of Innovation Management held the first meeting of the R&D Directors Club. Following these two meeting the decision was made to continue the discussions initiated by directors during educational courses. “ We hope that the Club activity will promote to increase of influence of the innovation directors professional community and also to real significance of the research and elaboration sphere as key driving force within innovation economy development”, - said Andrei Volkov, Dean of the Moscow School of Management.