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Rusnano: Fostering Nanotechnology Innovation in Russia

Anatoly Chubais Noubar Afeyan PhD '87: April 9, 2010; Running Time: 51:54

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

In both lecture format and conversation with Sloan Senior Lecturer Noubar Afeyan, RUSNANO CEO Anatoly Chubais presents an ambitious plan to create Russia’s Nanotechnology Center—a $10 billion, entrepreneurial ecosystem that incorporates education, research and business incubation. Noting that a plan of this depth also requires the deep engagement with an academic institution Chubais discusses the launch of SKOLKOVO, the Moscow School of Management, where MIT Sloan has been involved in a major collaboration.

From MIT Sloan School of Management Newsroom

RUSNANO, part economic development entity, part venture capital firm, recently turned to MIT Sloan to devise a custom Executive Education program to help it cultivate an entrepreneurial ecosystem in Russia. The effort is part of the government’s plan to diversify their natural-resource-based economy. “We’re creating an innovation economy,” said Anatoly Chubais, CEO of RUSNANO, and a leading architect of Russia’s post-Soviet privatization. “We are to be entrepreneurial not just at a company level, but at a country level.” With a budget of up to $10 billion (USD) in government funds, RUSNANO co-invests in nanotechnology projects in areas such as solar energy, composite materials, nano-biotechnology, and mechanical engineering that have high potential for commercial or social benefit. RUSNANO stipulates that all companies that win funding must operate in Russia. Its goal is to ensure the production of the value of Russia’s nanotechnology industry reaches $30 billion by 2015. MIT Sloan’s custom program featured sessions on leadership, organizational change, innovation, strategy, and entrepreneurship. But what most interested the nine RUSNANO executives who attended the course was how MIT has so successfully commercialized its innovation.

“MIT research and its entrepreneurial spinoffs have had a huge impact on the local economy, the U.S. economy, and global economies,” says Steven Eppinger, Professor of Management Science and Engineering Systems at Sloan, who lead the program. “We’re a living example of what they’re trying to do.”

Replicating MIT’s start-up culture is a key challenge for RUSNANO because Russia does not have a tradition of commercializing ideas that come out of the academic structure, says Noubar Afeyan, a Senior Lecturer at MIT in both the Sloan School of Management and the Biological Engineering Department, and one of the instructors in the program.

Lecture Details

Location: E51-345

“We should do either the best technologies in the world, or (do) nothing.”

Anatoly Chubais

About the Speakers

Anatoly Chubais

Chairman and CEO, Rusnano

Anatoly Chubais was born in Borisov, Belarus, then a part of the Soviet Union in 1955. He graduated in 1977 from the Leningrad Institute of Economics and Engineering with a degree in economics. He continued on as an assistant lecturer at his alma mater immediately after his graduation until 1982. He then became an assistant professor until 1990.

Starting in 1990, he served as deputy chairman of the Leningrad Executive Committee. He also advised St. Petersburg Mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, on economic matters. He played a central role in Russia's transformation from a Soviet to market-based economy.

As an influential member of the Yeltsin Administration, Mr. Chubais was instrumental in the privatization of Russia's economy in the 1990s. During his time in office, he held the post of Finance Minister for several terms as well as the post of Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office. In 1997, he became First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation and Minister of Finance, and presided on the Security Council of the Russian Federation. During that year, Mr. Chubais also awarded Euromoney Magazine’s 'Best Minister of Finance of the Year’ award.

Mr. Chubais was also chairman of Russia's state electric power monopoly RAO Unified Energy System of Russia for 10 years. More recently, he was appointed by President Dmitry Medvedev as CEO of the Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies (Rusnano), a non-profit state owned corporation to facilitate interaction between government, business, and the scientist community in the implementation of state policy for the nano-industry.

Noubar Afeyan PhD '87

Managing Partner and CEO, Flagship Ventures
Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management

Noubar Afeyan is Managing Partner and CEO of Flagship Ventures, a firm he co-founded in 2000. He is also a Senior Lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management where he has taught the MBA program’s primary entrepreneurship course since 2000. Dr. Afeyan has authored numerous scientific publications and patents since earning his Ph.D. in Biochemical Engineering from MIT in 1987.

A technologist, entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Dr. Afeyan has co-founded and helped build more than 20 successful life science and technology startups during the past two decades. He is a member of several advisory boards including the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at MIT, the Whitehead Institute at MIT, the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), the SKOLKOVO School of Management in Moscow and the Board of Overseers of Boston University. He is also a member of the Board of Overseers of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

About the Host

About the Host

MIT Sloan School of Management

The MIT Sloan School of Management, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of the world’s leading business schools — conducting cutting-edge research and providing management education to top students from more than 60 countries. The School is part of MIT’s rich intellectual tradition of education and research.

MIT Sloan began in 1914 as engineering administration curriculum in the MIT Department of Economics and Statistics. The scope and depth of this educational focus have grown steadily in response to advances in the theory and practice of management to today’s broad-based management school.

A program offering a master’s degree in management was established in 1925. The world’s first university-based executive education program — the MIT Sloan Fellows — was created in 1931 under the sponsorship of Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., an 1895 MIT graduate who was then chairman of General Motors. A MIT Sloan Foundation grant established the MIT School of Industrial Management in 1952 with a charge of educating the “ideal manager.”