OREANDA-NEWS. April 06, 2012. The SKOLKOVO business-school took part in the Congress of AIESEC alumni of the CIS countries.

On the Congress second day Lawrence Wright, start-up director of the SKOLKOVO business-school, held a lecture on the topic of entrepreneurship in Russia and the USA, spoke about the key problem of the start-up market development in Russia: lack of smart money, ideas of high quality and professional teams; he shared his 20-year entrepreneurial experience as well. “The pool of good ideas in the Russian start-up community is rather small, and there are even less instruments and opportunities for their implementation”, said Lawrence Wright. “Raise your hand those who has at least once launched your own business”, - almost everybody rose their hand, “And twice?”, - a half of the hands drew down. At the fifth time there were only two hands left in the air, one of them was the one of Lawrence. “In Russia it is assumes that an unsuccessful attempt to launch a business is a failure. In the USA they believe that a failure is when there have been no failures. As any entrepreneurial experience is still some kind of experience that people are proud of, and in start-upers are interested in”. After that the Congress participants presented their projects, including Irina Linnik and Dmitry Yurchenko, MBA-1 graduates (Life button).

In the end of the key day Gor Nakhapetyan, Founding partner of SKOLKOVO, Managing director of Troika Dialog, performed in front of the participants. Gor held an interactive workshop on the topic of Russia’s future, shared his vision concerning approaches to the city and country brand management, asked the participants to express their own idea about Russia’s development. “And how do you see our country in fifteen years? With what core characteristic would you describe it?” The talk with the participants has been really multi-faceted; everything was discussed – from Russia’s entry in the WTO to small and medium business. As an absolutely positive example Gor has notices the experience of Kaluga, “It is the region that didn’t have manufacture at all. During just a couple of years due to private investors and city administration efforts it has become a totally new economic structure”.

11 AIESEC graduates have chosen the SKOLKOVO business-school, among them are Irina Linnik (MBA-1), Anna Puzey (MBA-3), Viktor Nasirov (EMBA-6) and others. At the moment several AIESEC graduates are engaged into the admission process for the MBA and EMBA programmes. In August the AIESEC Congress will take place on the SKOLKOVO Campus; and SKOLKOVO graduate who are AIESEC graduates at the same will participate in special events. We wish them good luck and further success!