St Petersburg: Clusters open borders. Time for leaders

Cleantech companies’ participation in the international programs means new opportunities for development!

V St. Petersburg International Cluster Conference “Clusters open borders. Time for leaders” will be held from 16th to 17th of May, 2019. An attentive reader may note this year’s subtopic “Time of Leaders”. Obviously, the choice of the topic is not accidental – this year’s discussions will revolve around successful cases in the field of cluster cooperation. 

St. Petersburg and its economic agents, being eager explorers, don’t lag behind European colleagues in this aspect. For example, Saint-Petersburg Cleantech Cluster for Urban Environment has been operating since 2014. Uniting the representatives of business, state and civil society, the cluster facilitates the improvement of energy efficiency in the city environment. However, there are a number of challenges that persist and need be faced in a proper and constructive manner. A special session on this very topic of international and cross border cooperation will take place during the conference on the 17th of May. The session is called “Interregional and cross-border cooperation programs”. It will be organized by our SmartUp partner St. Petersburg House Property Owners Association, a managing company for the St. Petersburg Cleantech Cluster.

Once dubbed “a window to Europe”, St. Petersburg is proud of its successful cross border cooperation projects, spanning ample industries. Cross border cooperation programs with Estonia, Latvia and South-Eastern Finland are flourishing, spurring transnational economic activity. Moreover, The Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme 2014-2020, encompassing both the EU countries and Russia, has a great modernizing potential, with about 105 projects being implemented under the Programme Programs such as these are extremely attractive for St. Petersburg’s small and medium enterprises. The question is how to coordinate the international projects and the strategies of cities development, while we can see the circular economy formation. Elena Belova, Head of Development Department in ICSER “Leontief Centre”, will address precisely this topic during the mentioned session . Svyatoslav Kuzmenko, the executive director of International consortium “St. Petersburg Cleantech Cluster for urban development” will speak about the international projects, which are successfully implemented by cluster members. Another topic of the panel will be cross border cooperation projects, carried out by private companies. Grigory Kunis (Managing Officer at iGooods.Ru) as well as Elena Oparina (Director of Marketing at “Enviro” LLC) will share their own experience.

    It is almost impossible not to discuss startups, when one talks about cross border cooperation. This extremely important issue will be addressed by Maxim Balanev, who is the Executive Director of the St. Petersburg Foundation for SME Development and a member of the SmartUp team. It is hardly imaginable to have such a discussion without also talking about SmartUp Accelerator, helping cleantech startups think globally and enter foreign markets trough international cooperation! The first round of our project has already helped 7 startups not only upgrade their skills, but find potential partners abroad. For sure, we can persuade the audience in the validity of “Dream Big, Think Small” philosophy. For us, it is not just a rhetorical bombast. We are assured that adoption of such a philosophy could become a first step towards building a successful export business model.

We would like to invite startups, business supporting organizations and authorities to take part in the discussion! The partcicipation in the event is free of charge. Please register here.