From February, 28 to March, 1 MEPhI has held the IV Strategic Session, dedicated to actualization of innovative university policy and summing up of series of meetings where university representatives have worked out strategical solutions for reorganization of university functioning process. The Head of the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo Professor A.E.Volkov, MEPhI rector M.N.Strikhanov and Skolkovo Business School experts have taken part in the Session.

A. Volkov has highlighted the third mission of the university which is its innovative activity (along with education and research). M.N. Strikhanov agreed with the previous speaker about innovation importance and claimed that there should be a final product in demand in industry.

Before the session university administration and employees have attended the lecture of "Nanotechnology Center" Tehnospark CEO D.A.Kovalevich called “Mass produced technological enterprise: startup as a product of professional activity” where non-classical approach to innovative activity has been presented. In the first part of his speech the lecture touched upon the topic from enterpriser’s point of view, the second was from the researcher’s one.

The first part was characterizing Russian high-tech industry in multiple indicators which have shown a low technological enterprise level of our country. For example, in the USA 4 % of active population participate in it, 1.5-2 % in Europe and only 0.1 % in Russia which is falling behind 40 times from the leader.

The speaker has mentioned principles which are followed by ventures creators. They include companies’ interaction in the field of material-based technologies, investment-attractiveness of the business, hyperspecialisation, and time which is a main source for enterprisers.

In the second part of his speech D.A. Kovalevich told that the engineering activity has split into 4 positions: applied researcher, developer, technologist and system engineer. He illustrated the process of successful functioning of all 4 positions by Weizmann Institute (Israel), KU Leuven (Belgium), IMEC scientific centre (Belgium) and VDL ETG company (Holland) respectively.

After the lecture the audience has divided into 5 groups to continue the analysis of group tasks started in October 2015 in context of MEPhI innovative activity and considering received material. Summing up, A.Volkov said that the “Education” group got the best results. Other groups –“Research”, “Innovation”, “Human resources” and “Forsight” were less successful although coming up with interesting ideas.

All in all, the expert claimed, that a transfer of educational university into a research one is a difficult way, possible only through innovation and enterprise.