SKOLKOVOBusinessDialog first meeting

Dear all, we are happy to present the new student initiative – SKOLKOVOBusinessDialog. On March 1 the first meeting of SKOLKOVOBusinessDialog participants took place; it was dedicated to energy engineering “Energy audit and power saving: new opportunities”. In future guys plan to hold regular meetings for students and graduates who are interested in experience exchange, searching for business partners and discussing of new business directions.

And for now there are some details about the meeting held. Among visiting speakers there were: Mikhail Korolev (EMBA 2011 graduate, Institute of Energy Systems, chairman of the board of directors of Energotest, stakeholder), Sergei Sitnikov (guest, Baker&McKenzie CIS Limited), Vladimir Volik (guest, Partner at Branan). And we offer a short description of each speaker’s performance.

Mikhail Korolev spoke about trends in the sphere of energy efficiency in Russian and about perspective business spheres that should be paid attention to, “The energy efficiency potential amazes. Applying a western method we can save dozens of billions dollars”. Mikhail highlighted three kinds of the energy efficiency potential: technical, financial and economic. With the emerge of energy efficient projects the most needed branches are energy audit, counter production and sale, energy efficient equipment production and sale, energy service contracts, financing of energy service companies, equipment leasing.

In his performance Sergei Sitnikov touched upon core aspects of the Russian regulation saying that statutory and regulatory basis in Russia is far from ideal. Not enough attention is paid to direct subsidies, power saving technologies stimulation, state and private enterprise purchase guarantees, “In Europe and the USA the regulation approach is different – each person has a purchase guarantee, what we don’t have. Give business a motivation so that enterprises would like to work on energy efficiency projects!”

As a consultant Vladimir Volik gave a piece of professional advice: “Service development and promotion is a great idea, the core thing is introduction of assured suppliers. They need additional income. It would be correct to come to them and to use them as agents of your services for consumers. They understand consumers and it’s time to approach them and promote your services”.

After the speakers’ performances a lively discussion took place; participants talked and shared experience with each other for a long time. The event has run excellently, and we hope that the guys will go on with that practice. Let’s wish them further success in the organization of such effective meetings!