Surkov is one of those smart guys in Kremlin administration. But the plan to build a silicon valley in Moscow is just ridiculous. As well as other government pl

Surkov is one of those smart guys in Kremlin administration. But the plan to build a silicon valley in Moscow is just ridiculous. As well as other government plans on innovations. There are at least two reasons for that: First and most important is that innovations exist not just because government wants it. At least until the government is the client (and I suppose that's not what they're going to be in this case). Innovations is a result of public and individuals needs, a competition of prices and efficiency (and other things). And it also takes a certain infrastructure for them to work. Russia lacks these things. Most people simply don't care about better quality of life or at least are not willing to do anything about it. Then there's no infrastructure: an example of that would be a broken national post system or absolutely no financial and banking culture (very limited usage of credit cards). I could name a lot of successful US startups that simply wouldn't work in Russia for those reasons. Second is corruption, of course. I can imagine it's slightly simpler for IT business to stay out of it, but only until you're making a certain amount of money. A common saying in Russian business is "Sit quiet and try not to reflect the light". The problem with all those plans of building something innovative is that government should not initiate them at all. If they ever wanted to make any difference, they would probably be trying to build a healthy environment for businesses. Business does not need any help. What it needs is to eliminate obstructions on its way.