The European University at St. Petersburg invited the CEMAT research centre of the Aalto University School of Business as a partner in a project in which technology entrepreneurship in Russia and Finland was examined.
‘The research community has turned a new page because both the initiative and the funding come from Russia,’ explains Riitta Kosonen, head of the CEMAT research centre.
CEMAT also has the added benefit of possessing Russian-speaking staff and knowledge of the Russian way of doing things. Different types of innovation environments and entrepreneur profiles were examined in the project. Four Russian regions (Kazan, Tomsk, Novosibirsk and St. Petersburg), which all have different characteristics, were compared with Finland, South Korea and Taiwan.
The project staff also conducted lengthy interviews with entrepreneurs and examined their background. ‘We approached entrepreneurship from a new angle. We went through their life course starting from the childhood and examined whether the innovation environment had encouraged or discouraged entrepreneurship. There are plenty of differences between Russian regions but also between Finland and Russia,’ explains Päivi Karhunen, one of the researchers involved in the project.
One finding was that Finnish entrepreneurs with university education have similar family values as the Tatars of Kazan. Both emphasize independence and hard work. At the same time, Tomsk is an engineer-dominated region and in this respect it resembles Finland where most of the technology entrepreneurs are engineers.
Finns have the advantage of networking
In research-based entrepreneurship, Russia is still in its infancy. For Russians, an innovation means a world-class research result that pushes technological knowledge to new levels. For Finnish entrepreneurs, a research result only becomes an innovation when it can be turned into practical applications.
Collective thinking is considered typical of Russia, while Finns are considered as individualists. In technology entrepreneurship it is the other way round. In Finland, new companies are established by small groups of people as experts set up networks. In Russia, most researchers working as entrepreneurs are like fearless inventors, promoting their ideas without the help of others.
Finnish entrepreneurs are more market-driven, while their Russian counterparts mostly market their innovations to the public sector. In the Finnish innovation environment, companies and universities cooperate closely in projects such as those coordinated by Tekes. Applied research is not frowned upon in Finland, whereas in Russia, the aim is to produce world-class research findings.
Two presentations on the study will be heard at the Russia seminar of the CEMAT research centre on 11 December. Read more and register to the seminar.
Text: Helinä Hirvikorpi