On December, 11 the Awarding Ceremony for the Contest winners “50 best innovative ideas for the Republic of Tatarstan” was held in Kazan. Prime Minister of the Republic of Tatarstan Ildar Khalikov, representatives of Russian and European venture industry and representatives of Federal and Regional investment fund participated in the Ceremony.

This contest is the eighth contest organized by investment and venture fund of the Republic of Tatarstan jointly with the Academy of Sciences of Tatarstan. It is organized for stimulation of innovative activity,   promotion of intellectual achievements of specialists in scientific and technical field, assistance in using intellectual potential of Russian regions and foreign countries in decision of scientific, technical and socio-economic tasks which Tatarstan faces.  

Director of investment and venture fund of the Republic of Tatarstan Ainur Aideldinov mentioned that amount of participants from different countries are increasing from year to year; in this year representatives from 20 regions of the Russian Federation and the USA participated in the Contest. According to him, this indicates that the Contest is gaining popularity and is actually working. Quality of presented projects is also increasing. 1323 applications were sent. During 8 years their total amount exceeded 8 thousand. Main criteria of competition are importance of project for the Republic of Tatarstan, compliance with modern level of development of science and technology, main priorities of socio-economic development of the Republic and potential of idea for commercialization. The last factor has a special importance. According to Ainur Aideldinov, this year important innovation was included into the Contest; this innovation resulted in decrease of applications by 400 in comparison with last year.  All participants who sent applications had to confirm it with an agreement signed with any company which is working in market and is ready to buy this innovative product or support its promotion. «I suppose that we included these conditions in proper time, because critical mass of applicatios has been already accumulated.  Participants are targeted seriously at monetizing specific project and implementing in market and among consumers”, mentioned Ainur Aideldinov.

This year the Contest consists of 8 nominations: “Perspective” (for pupils and students), “Start of innovations”, “Nanoimpulse” (innovations in the field of nanotechnologies), “Cooperation” (ideas designed to problem solving which face enterprises), “The best invention of year”, “Socio-economic development of the Republic of Tatarstan”, “Innovations in education”,  «Projects Associations of Russian innovative regions”. The Contest winners are awarded the prizes; there are 75 prizes in this year.  Сумма премий ‑ 25 тысяч или 50 тысяч рублей, в зависимости от номинации.Amount of grants depended on nomination:   25 thousand and 50 thousand of rubles. It is splendid that scientists of Kazan Federal University are included in the list of winners!

“It is pleasant that people from different regions participate in the Contest. This year projects were received from Moscow, Yekaterinburg,   Izhevsk, Tomsk and other cities. This makes it possible to attract best projects of our colleagues from most innovative regions for further increase of competitiveness of Tatarstan”, mentioned Prime Minister of the Republic of Tatarstan Ildar Khalikov during the Awarding Ceremony for the Contest winners. He reminded that from the beginning of 2000-s the Republic heads to innovative development model and one of the key instruments of its implementation is forming infrastructure for small business and medium business: from business-incubators to large industrial parks and technology cities which are created in close cooperation with leading companies of the Republic.  According to Ildar Khalikov, new stage of Tatarstan innovative development is the implementation of large projects in field of information technology such as building of Kazan innovative city-satellite “Innopolis”, and one of the most important elements should be IT-University, which is being established in cooperation with leading American University Carnegie Mellon University in the field of computer education.

«We are open to cooperation with all innovative companies, which are ready to invest not only capital expenditures but their scientific potential in development, promotion and production of science-intensive products on territory of Tatarstan”,  underlined Prime Minister of Tatarstan.  According to him the Contest “50 best innovative ideas of the Republic of Tatarstan” is good form of revealing ideas and talents.  «I wish all winners and Contest participants to implement your innovative ideas in concrete projects which will be realistic managerial and manufacturing technologies and, in the end, to implement in competitive production”, said Ildar Khalikov.