Boosting Global Economies Through Local Technology Innovation Centers

Last month, the well-known complex at 3000 Sand Hill Road welcomed its newest tenant: The Russian Innovation Center. Its charter is to promote high-tech partnerships and scientific cooperation between Russian and American companies, venture capital firms, and academic and scientific institutions.

The Russians are the latest to plant an Innovation Center in the region. Like others before them, they recognized that Silicon Valley is more than just the Capital of Capital. It’s a unique mindset that inspires entrepreneurs to think big and consider the impossible possible. For the Russians especially, it’s a place that has long produced brilliant technology, often enabled by strong threads of Russian DNA.

With this official channel, young Russian entrepreneurs can more easily tap into an ecosystem that’s wired to create world-class tech companies.

There’s plenty of precedent to validate the Russians’ move. Many Irish companies can trace their early US market success to the incubation services provided by Government agency, Enterprise Ireland [EI]. At EI’s Silicon Valley offices, Irish tech executives get space and practical support, along with access to high-profile local executives who can influence growth for their embryonic businesses. And in San Jose last year, giving a further boost to Ireland-based entrepreneurs with US market ambitions, the Irish Technology Leadership Group launched the Irish Innovation Center.

Others are bound to follow. Foreign-championed Innovation Centers make good business sense and benefit more than just the entrepreneur. While the primary premise for most is to provide small companies with a speedy conduit to US investors, customers and other important constituents, the Centers also stimulate innovation and pump dollars into the local economy. Some entrepreneurs take up full-time residence. They listen, learn, connect, invent and build. Others travel back and forth as they grow their business, planting innovation seeds in their countries of origin.

And those seeds benefit the US in a big way. How? Because success for most entrepreneurs, especially those operating in small countries, depends on building an export-oriented business. Getting there requires a presence in high-growth markets like the US. This means creating jobs in those markets. For Irish entrepreneurs, this is a particular strength, as the 82,000 Americans working at 237 Ireland-based corporations would attest. Not surprisingly, some of the management talent in these Irish companies was nurtured in Silicon Valley. Now that same talent is influencing economic growth in both countries - from a tiny island.

As the Russians no doubt know, their Silicon Valley Innovation Center will do more than catalyze new opportunities for indigenous Russian businesses. It will also ignite a two-way investment flow that transcends nationality and benefits many.