Slashdot Mirror
New Russian Science City Modeled On Silicon Valley
Hugh Pickens writes "Russia's rich scientific traditions and poor record of converting ideas into marketable products are both undisputed, cited as causes for the Soviet collapse and crippling dependence on mining and petroleum. Now the NY Times reports that the Russian government, hoping to diversify its economy away from oil, is building the first new scientific city since the collapse of the Soviet Union modeled, improbably, on Silicon Valley and jokingly referred to as Cupertino-2. 'The whole country needs some sort of breakthrough,' says Viktor F. Vekselberg, the Russian business oligarch appointed co-director of the project. 'The founding of the innovation city, in form and substance, could be a launching pad for the country as a whole.' The new town is intended to advance five scientific priorities — communications, biomedicine, space, nuclear power, and energy conservation — and to encourage cross-fertilization among disciplines. Property will not be owned, but rented, and the government will offer grants for scientists who struggle to find private financing. Once developed, the city is intended to incubate scientific ideas using generous tax holidays and government grants until the start-ups can become profitable companies. Its backers in government and the private sector describe it as an effort to blend the Soviet tradition of forming scientific towns with Western models of encouraging technology ventures around universities. 'In California, the climate is beautiful and they don't have the ridiculous problems of Russia,' says Andrey Shtorkh, publicist for the new venture, adding that to compete, Russia will form a place apart for scientists. 'They should be isolated from our reality.'"
Well, I hope that this centrally-dictated economic activity works better than the 20th century ones did.
Pirate Party UK
What a bunch of rubes. If they didn't screw up so badly last century, they could take a nice long rest on some laurels like us Americans.
... unless they pack it into one giant building and call it an arcology.
Though I couldn't link to it now, several weeks ago I read an analysis of this plan that was rather pessimistic. Earlier Russian scientific communities were, for all the lip service paid to science, really dedicated to furthering atomic weaponry. There was never a great diversity of scientific exploration going on within them, and Russia thus has no experience with establishing communities that can actually create profitable technologies that will boost the country's economy.
If you build it, venture capitalists will come?
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
They have intelligence and creativity. Their biggest challenge will be isolation from the corruption that seems endemic to Russia in this time. Corruption is pure poison to economic systems intended to be based on merit in markets. Like adding >300% to your company's overhead...how do you compete, even with fantastic ideas/tech?
Research Triangle, Austin, Irvine . . . I don't think you can copy this culture. Bangalore comes the closest but actually got started in the 1970s, before Silicon Valley was the model. Everybody here is from somewhere else, including Russia. Where inside Russia could you draw that kind of international crowd?
Was never built. It grew.
putting a group if geeks in one spot and throwing money at it wont work, the Japanese did the same and it failed miserable. You have to have not only bright scientists but people who know how to manage and sell the ideas that are created by these people. Im an ideas man in my company but I will be the first to admit without good assistance from those around me I would have given up on many of my concepts within the first hour.
A major defect of capitalism is that it will tend to cater to the lowest common denominator. If everyone invests in the idea that science (evolutionary bioengineering, alternative energy development, vaccines, space exploration) is bad, then the whole economy and culture is going to go south pretty quickly. When China owns the factories and the intellectual property, things won't be looking so good.
And if Palin and Huckabee end up bickering over which day should be Jesus Day, all I can say is, good game America. It was fun while it lasted.
You mean to say they plan to also build a weather machine to replicate the ever sunny skies here?
You mean to say they plan to also build a weather machine to replicate the ever sunny skies here?
Why bother? They'll finally build the atomic sun!
Personally, I think there need to realistically be three things, in proper order
These three conspire to attract rich people and nerds as the article states. That SUN (Stanford University Network), HP and Google are directly from Stanford, and that Oracle got it's start as a government project are quite good examples.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Specifically, I'm referring to your argument that "Science is one thing that if done right under socialism works best."
Under capitalism, science is often bent to the needs of the patron/employer/investor.
Under socialism, science is often bent to the political needs of the "people" as interpreted and enforced by the government.
Neither case must necessarily lead to a poor outcome. However, it's naive to think science can be completely unfettered from the society that supports it. All forms of government and economy concentrate power into the hands of a few at the expense of the many. Those few then use that power to shape the actions of others to suit their own needs and beliefs.
Gloss: Lysenko was the director of the Lenin All-Union Institute of Agricultural Sciences, who decreed as a matter of state ideology (among other bizarre rubbish) that desirable traits in plants were not heritable, but instead could only spread through grafts and nongenetic methods. In short, he was a Lamarckian who could ruin a scientist's career, or worse, for daring question the validity of official state science.
Under Lysenko, agricultural science in the USSR was, from the late 1920s until 1964, based on ideology rather than the scientific method, and this led to uncounted misery for Soviet citizens due to massively underperforming or failed crops.
Wikipedia has a decent article about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
it actually grew in a much more organic fashion and a big part of it was how the culture attracted the people, not how the people attracted the culture. Having a government "plan" a silicon valley is like trying to cook by throwing all the ingredients in a pot, turning on the heat and hoping for the best.
Monstar L
Russia isn't really socialist anymore.
The SU collapsed and the new Russia is ad capitalistic as it's euro neighbors.
Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?
"NO" Says the man in Washington, "It belongs to the poor."
"NO" Says the man in the Vatican, "It belongs to God."
"NO" Says the man in Moscow, "It belongs to everyone."
I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose...
Rapture!
The Charm School was a 1988 thriller novel by Nelson DeMille. :)
A training facility was set up in Russian so spies could be trained to infiltrate American society by living in a fake US town.
Could copying/dreaming about/improving US communications, US biomedicine, Russian space hardware, Russian nuclear power, and EU/Asian energy conservation really geek up young Russians?
Surly a picture of Putin with Alexander Lebed above the communal lab and the hint that Moscow U/city papers could be
canceled if grades drop would be enough to motivate any young Russian.
If your really really good, no Obama style City Year near Mayak for you
Geeks and nerds like the free range freedoms of the USA not gilded gulags.
Learn from China and send them to the USA and get them educated for free, then as they get homesick debrief them.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I wonder what serious western businesses will want to invest in such a corrupt country. Most major international businesses work in Russia, but only because the market there is so large and untapped. These large international businesses are just there though with sales departments.
>br> A translator who works with westerners in Moscow once told me the way to tell if a foreign company in Russia is paying bride to distributors ect., is to look if they are making a profit. If they are, then they are paying bribes to someone. It is possible to have a business in Russia and not make bribes, but not to have a business in Russia, not pay bribes and make a profit.
>br> TO conclude, as long as this business culture there continues as such, Western companies will only invest in Sales departments in Russia, and not any further. There are cheaper alternatives in the east for non-western scientific investment.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
Science incubators and technology districts are usually the buzzwords evocated by politicians and real-estate investors. Hewlett and Packard years ago demonstrated that, to start a succesful company, everything you need are a bright idea and a garage. I still have to meet a politicians with 1/1000 of the genius of these guys.
Dear former Soviet Socialists,
It doesn't work like that. You don't plan things like Silicon Valley, they are just things that happen. Silicon Valley itself is something that nobody should deliberately emulate. The fact that it is the home of many successful tech companies is simply a bizarre freak of nature. Otherwise, it's just a strange congested-but-also-not-dense piece of land. There's nothing inherently technological or successful about it. It's just a patch of land that's not really in the mountains and not quite on the coast either, that's not quite industrial and not quite residential.
Regards,
People who have been to Silicon Valley
... and then they built the supercollider.
It's not a silly idea. Russia is positioning itself as an "energy power", and energy projects need heavy industrial infrastructure. The USSR was good at that.
Fusion would be a good goal. Or thorium reactors. That's a problem that may yield to organized, determined effort and money. The USSR still has a big nuclear program, and resources to draw upon.
or place to sit. It's hindered by widespread corruption and still quite criminalized economy. Tax breaks will be used for tax evasion by unrelated businesses and grants will be stolen by corrupted officials. Right now high-tech, which is by its nature quite transparent and vulnerable for extortion can not compete with different shady and semi-shady businesses. The way to grow hi-tech in Russia is not to pour money into it, but clean corruption from the government, especially local authorities. Do it and high-tech will flourish without any outside interventions.
"2pertino", on the other hand ...
Or maybe "Cuper2no" ...
You can't duplicate geek culture if you haven't mastered the pun.
...science city models YOU!!!!
I don't have time to look for the Slashdot article, but I think there was a similar story a few years ago about the EU attempting to create an "elite" university to complete with US schools such as Harvard and Yale. When will they ever learn that you cannot just one day decide to create these things from scratch? There are many factors that must first be present in order to allow them to come into existence then become what they are on their own merit. Where do the Europeans and Russians get these ideas from?
Paul Graham also writes that it might actually be possible to buy a Silicon Valley, or something very close to it, by investing a billion dollars or so in a city with the right environment that will be conducive to the growth of startups. Perhaps someone in Russia read Graham's article and decided that they had the kind of political will (which Graham says is so unlikely) to pull it off.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
When you sign a non-aggression pact with a one-balled megalomaniac and proceed to carve up smaller countries, don't be surprised it comes round and bites you in the ass.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This will be another manner, in which government money will be pumped into the pockets of the government officials.
It has been proposed by the government there that in order to 'promote' innovation, the firms, who will be allowed to enter the zone will be selected by government officials. In the zone they will not have to pay taxes I think but the most important aspect of this is that whoever is in the zone will be getting government contracts WITHOUT any competition. So that tells you everything you need to know about what will happen. The firms selected will be the ones close to the government officials selecting them and they will get the contracts for any 'innovations', which in reality will not promote any innovation, except one type of innovation: an easier way to siphon money for the politicians and their friends/relatives/people with the right attitude towards doing business, if you know what I mean.
You can't handle the truth.
Proving that once again, they just don't get it.
I immigrated from Russia to US a couple decades ago. No matter how they dress their city up, they will not be able to foster the kind of innovation and opportunity that the US provides. Until they fix that massive corruption there, I will not touch investing there with a 1000 foot pole (and I suspect many others have the same line of thinking).
I read a story once of this guy who went there to establish a Subway chain. Once he got it set up, he had to leave for a bit to tend to some other business. When he came back there were these hired goons with guns who ran him off his own business premises and took over. Now, I bet that these kind of things happen fairly regularly (hell, you can even hire the police there to do your dirty deeds).
You would have to be a convoluted retard to take your money to that region and expect any kind of return on your investment. You'd be lucky to keep your head attached to your body. If your business doesn't get jacked, your ass will - in hopes to score some ransom.
They need to focus less on imitating, and more on fixing deep inherent problems like corruption. Pour that money in restructuring policy and security first, then worry about the infrastructure that will ride on that policy.
> I don't have time to look for the Slashdot article
You must be new here.
I have an IT background and a decade of experience working with/for Russian government IT-related agencies.
There're several cities in Russia with strong academic traditions which were the analogue of Silicon Valley during Soviet times (Novosibirsk is the best known of all).
There're cities near Moscow which even have high-tech-production infrastructure (Zelenograd, a "microchip city" of Soviet times) - they are not being used.
What government does is building "Silicon Valley" in a empty field near Moscow - easier to launder money this way.
I'm willing to bet a thousand bucks that there are only three possible outcomes:
1) 90% of funding laundered to offshore banks, 10% is spent on administrative expenses (shiny sport cars for management), project is silently closed and written off;
2) 90% of funding laundered to offshore banks, 10% is spent on administrative expenses (shiny sport cars for management), scape goat it found and publicly spanked (but not too hard), project is closed and written off;
3) 90% of funding laundered to offshore banks, 5% is spent on administrative expenses (shiny sport cars for management), 5% is spent to build a couple of buildings and hire 10 scientific-looking guys. They are made into media stars to show how great new "Silicon Valley" is. Project is declared a huge success. After a year the funding is cut, project is silently closed and written off.
There's no other possible outcome given the amount of corruption in Russia and this government track record.
IBM had a similar attitude to Bell labs. I don't know if they still do however.
It's not about VC and it's not about suburbia.
Russia, unfortunately, doesn't have strong enforcement of the rule of law, and it doesn't acknowledge intellectual property rights.
As much as I think long term software patents are B.S., a much shorter term protection for software and an period of protection aligned with that of other W.T.O. members would go a long way towards opening up Russia to business, and a long way to stopping the "brain drain" their politicians are complaining about. The normalization and bilateral agreements on intellectual property are missing, and that's the major reason Russia remains an observer at the W.T.O. rather than being a member. There an excellent paper which makes this point right here:
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/cp73_katz_final.pdf
Without the ability to feel safe in their homes, they are not going to attract the talent or the entrepreneurs.
Reading the article, it looks like the capitalists are asking for a free-for-all zone, while the government is interested in putting together another cold war era style "science city", where the inhabitants are just as insulated. To quote from the article:
"In California, the climate is beautiful and they don't have the ridiculous problems of Russia," Mr. Shtorkh said. To compete, he said, Russia will form a place apart for scientists. "They should be isolated from our reality," he added.
...which does absolutely nothing to fix that "reality" so that their new "science city" becomes anything more than a walled microcosm of a Silicon Valley suburb surrounding a Silicon Valley tech park.
This seems as wrong to me as the U.S. Government "fixing the economy" by giving tons of taxpayer money to the very people who broke it in the first place. I do not expect this venture to be successful unless they very quickly change their ground rules on intent and plan of action.
-- Terry
No problem, they've got a lot of people that have come back from Silicon Valley so they don't have to invent it from scratch.
Russia, China and others are putting a lot of money into trying to create the Silicon Valley situation where people with good ideas come from all over the world and can get funding for their ideas. It will probably work somewhere because the USA has destroyed the advantage they had by making it difficult for people to get in and by not having much investment money available anymore. It doesn't help that California is run like Albania on cocaine.
China's probably got the head start near Hong Kong but there is a lot of energy money in Russia.
They think if they build special city and make special signs on buildings they'll magically have the technologies flock to them and make them money. But really they (read: russian officials) just will steal the money allotted for building the "city".
You must also be extremely closed-minded as well as short on time...
Oxford, Kingston, Cambridge, London Metropolitan University, University Of Greenwich, King's College London, Glasgow University, St Andrews and the Imperial College to name a few, are all famous Universities across the UK with thriving communities surrounding them. They are some of the best schools and universities in the world and Cambridge and Oxford are ranked 1 & 2 respectively for physics research here in the UK with a lot of interesting work being done at both.
In what universe does the EU (or at least the UK) need to compete with Yale and Harvard?
P.S. At least we do get ideas, instead of trying to make existing ones pay out for a few centuries... (Cheap shot, but who cares?)
Perelman didn't need ... isolation from reality. It's the meat grinding machine of Russian society that creates that kind of genius in the first place. That said, they do need a way to materialize theoretical science into concrete enterprises.
Uh, are they really still trying to be build communist utopias in capitalist Russia? Perhaps I'm missing something but this sounds like a planned city with a state run economy. It's almost the opposite of Silicon Valley. In large part Silicon Valley developed because of the conditions around it that fostered entrepreneurship (e.g. proximity of smart, relatively wealthy kids with lots of spare time at nearby colleges, good research facilities, etc). If Russia finds a location to replicate the conditions found in Silicon Valley, then that would be fantastic, but trying to create something from the top-down that duplicates Silicon Valley rather than cultivating something that grows from the bottom-up is doomed to failure.
A city with the sprawling suburban charm of San Jose with ... Russian weather?
Where do I sign up?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It is all about the Externalities
“Under capitalism, science is often bent to the needs of the patron/employer/investor.”
So What? Is this good, bad or indifferent? Let me tell you why.
Basic Research [i.e. Science done at Research Universities, Bell Labs, etc.] has the following qualities.
High Variance [Lots of missies, but the hits tend to be home runs]
Commercial applications tend to be 10+ years. I tend to disagree with people who say that companies are driven by quarterly profits – however business plans tend to fall apart if longer then 10 years – just too many variables and assumptions.
Value of the research tends to land outside of the company. It is hard to put the genie back in the bottle. It took years of tinkering to make computer chips, lasers, biotech, LCD, etc. from an interesting niche product to something mainstream. The companies that blazed the trail in research have a no better chance of producing a main stream product as a Johnny come lately.
Basic Research generates great value – only some of which lands with the company – most lands with the public.
I tend towards the liberation side, but unless we have draconian IP laws on the books the profit motive tends to underfund basic research.
I have great doubts about the this City – but this is because I tend to think of grand scale from scratch projects are mostly doomed vanity projects.
The problem, however with government-funded basic research is the lack of useful applications. A centrally-funded scientist has no reason -at all- to convert his discovery into an actual invention, so this will generally not happen.
Perhaps an example : in the 20th century cars were invented. The basic principle of the explosive engine, however, had long been demonstrated by "patronized" scientists (scientists working for royalty), and was generally well-known. Actual test explosion-based engines had rotated (a few times) 150 years before the invention of the car (granted, due to lack of useable fuel they weren't practical, but still. One such engine was built into some of the first machine guns).
So it seems to me the answer is somewhere in the middle, on the one hand provide generous subsidies, on the other hand forcing scientists to go into the private sector. Perhaps a time limit on employment at universities would provide the right incentives ? Make it generous, say 16 years. But after 16 years, every cent of subsidy stops, and they have to find a private investor.
The same problem poses itself in general problem solving. The time horizon that is a property of rational thought. What is rationally optimal for the next 3 seconds will generally be a very different beast from what is rationally optimal for the next 10 years. And, while perhaps only relevant for the catholic church and evolution, is radically different from rationally optimal stuff with a 500 year time horizon.
Let's take global warming and having children, and compare the optimal actions depending on time horizons :
3 seconds : optimal course is to ignore global warming, children are not even theoretically possible
10 years : optimal course is to ignore global warming (except that it might relieve social pressures, or gain one power, but you cannot scientifically defend it), children are not advisable
50 years : moderate actions to prevent global warming would seem to be rational. Children might be nice to have.
100 years : large costs to prevent global warming seem justified, although one should also take into account that oil will be gone long before this time passes. In this time period, obviously it is absolutely essential to have sufficient children to carry on after you're dead. The more, the better.
500 years : ignore global warming (after all, wel WILL run out of oil in less than 50 years, so what's the big hubhub all about ?). Instead, focus on lots of children, but keep in mind that the ideology must survive : so limit the amount of children high enough to expand, but low enough so that each can get a good education.
The "Russian tradition of building secret towns?" Towns like Oak Ridge, TN, or Los Alamos, NM, or Hanford, WA, maybe? Explain again how this project is doomed to fail as a government effort to make a technological leap. On the contrary, our own experience is great success doing this sort of thing. Nor is this an American peculiarity--the Germans very successfully built an entire town at Peenemunde to develop and construct V-2 rockets. In fact, here in America we capitalized on this success by moving its authors, notably Werner von Braun, to Huntsville, AL where we created yet another failed government experiment to land men on the moon...
I'm thinking that people should read a bit less Ayn Rand science fiction and a bit more actual history.
They should have modeled it after Eureka, a town made-up almost entirely of geniuses.
'In California, the climate is beautiful and they don't have the ridiculous problems of Russia,' says Andrey Shtorkh, publicist for the new venture, adding that to compete, Russia will form a place apart for scientists. 'They should be isolated from our reality.'"
While I certainly won't disagree that California seems to be isolated from everyone else's reality, I think he has it backwards in that scientists should be isolated. The hell they should! Scientists need to be in society to see what problems it faces and be inspired to find solutions for them. By isolating them, you are effectively removing some of the best stimulus available for them.
Not only that, but the economy is the best way to determine the feasibility of a product. So what they've done here is to guarantee every crack pot scheme ( and face it, fellow scientists, we have a lot of them. Even if they seem AWESOME to us at the time, we do come up with some doosies ) gets an equal shake with a genuine idea.
I don't see this ending well for them, but I hope I'm wrong.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Problem is, with all that oil revenue going to ruling KGB mob coffins, who needs science? ./ ? Sure, Putin set up ministry of truth to make waves on intraweb when he came to power, but it was mostly limited to russian speaking sites so far.
BTW, what's up with recent russian astroturfing here on
Silicon Valley builds Government?
If Russia gets a Silicon Valley, it will be one of those previous science cities or failed attempts. The real genesis of Silicon Valley was government funded folks getting trained and introduced to things like radio communications and radar during and after the two world wars, then having the apron strings cut and finding their own work in the civilian world. A few of those folks nucleated new groups that tinkered on consumer product ideas, and the valley was born.
The part the government played was in educating a wider range of people in technical topics, and in triggering development on cheap land near military bases and port cities that had already filled with more traditional business and industry.
And none of them has come close to the dynamism seen in Silicon Valley. They often lack one of the key components: a university, insatiable entreprenuerism, intelligent capital, etc. The main advantage Russia might have is previous experience with top-rated Science Cities like Novasibirsk.
Yes, clearly the human species needs more distance from reality. It's not like ignoring reality created all of our problems so far.
Futurist Traditionalism
"There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere."
-Isaac Asimov
It took over 100 posts before we got the first In Soviet Russia joke?
This is not the slashdot I grew up with! What a sad day indeed.
If the whole country needs a breakthrough, I propose it be that russians stop being so scummy and criminalistic.
The power vacuum left the whole country like the wild west.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Hsinchu, Taiwan is one of the few (are there any others?) successful examples of centrally-planned science cities (founded during its period of totalitarianism).
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
-Tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
More likely...
1. Cheap startup resources (e.g., cheap land in a reasonable climate initially)
2. Ambitious institutions (e.g., a university like Stanford) to recruit researchers
3. Money to start companies (be it funding from military contracts or industrial investment)
Also the silicon valley of today is really different in many ways from the silicon valley of the past (when it was starting up).
Most folks forget about the cheap resources aspect (because it's far from being cheap now). Originaly the land resource was cheap (stanford leased land cheaply to companies and the land in the orchards that were originally in the southbay was easy pickings for companies that wanted their own campus). Today the land is expensive, but it's still reasonably to start a company as it's easier to build "people" resource into critical mass quickly (there are lots of experienced folks to hire away from other companies). When you are burning money in a startup company, building critical mass quickly and getting access to experience people efficiently is still worth something, although this is becoming more of an issue in SV of today.
In addition to Stanford and UC Berkeley, corporations like IBM, Intel, HP, SGI, and Applied Materials (in the past), and now Google, Genentech, Gilead are recruiting researchers to the area. Researchers that may have originally been attracted to a low cost housing and weather, may now weigh the odds of continued employment in the same geographic location (and for a spouse if trying to solve the 2-body problem) if the original plans don't pan out.
The money has transtioned from military contracts, to venture capital (sand-hill), and in some ways to serial capital (e.g., someone made a bunch of money on one startup, and now does another startup).
In some sense, Silicon Valley rebuilt itself a few more times using the same ingredients, but a different formula. Seems like this could be recreated elsewhere, but as always, there's an element of perseverance. I think it's the preseverance that is the what is missing in most of the SV knock-offs. Often governments put money into it, fail to get critical mass, get impatient, then pull the plug. I'm guess you really need is something like military contracts and an ambitious institution who don't really care about economic efficiency to get the ball rolling.
Even if the ball is rolling, it'll eventually stop (as it has in SV many times), and somebody has to get it going again. That's often the element that is forgotten. Wasn't it Thomas Edison one of the folks that popularized this route to one of the precursors to SV, Menlo Park NJ?
They need to keep their society's necessities from mothering their inventions.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
This post is on the money. I spent some time in another Former Soviet Union (FSU) country. It is amazing to see how the government hinders the economy there. I have concluded that to have a flourishing economy,you need several things:
1. Good educational institutions. Many FSU countries have pretty good sci/tech colleges. 2. Security of private property. People have to believe that they can keep what they create, and investors have to believe that their investment won't be taken somehow by the state, through unfair taxes, fines, or nationalization. 3. Legal stability. This is absolutely critical-in the country I visited the laws were changing almost monthly. Imagine trying to start a company when all the licenses you need are changing all the time. 4. An economic culture in which most people play by the rules. In many FSU countries, the lack of property security and legal stability lead to corruption and black markets, sometimes almost a third or a half of the so-called legal economy. 5. Labor force mobility-this is a tricky one-unless you live there for awhile you can't appreciate how difficult it is to move outside your own "Oblast" or region. Suffice to say there is a lot of paperwork and cost to live in another district.
All of this to say-it is not wrong to try to create a scientific/tech development zone, but the larger issues facing the economy in Russia will be problematic for that tech zone also.
Paul Graham has wrote an brilliant article on this subject http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
They better make sure I can get dim sum for breakfast, sushi for lunch, and burritos for dinner, or I ain't going there.