“ITMO University in St Petersburg, one of the many great engineering schools in Russia, has beaten hundreds of other universities to win the world student computer programming title for six of the past 10 years. It has fostered research with foreign universities and companies and is encouraging its students to launch their own businesses”, - says John Thornhill, the editor for the Innovation section.
“We want to make the profession of entrepreneur more popular,” – says one academic. “People who are 30 or 40 still look at entrepreneurs as something suspicious”.
Pavel Durov, the founder of the Telegram messenger and Vkontakte social network, has also commented on this:
“I still believe that Russia can become the “libertarian’s paradise”, as it was in the early 2000’s – though for a really short time. Russia is the synonym to unpredictability, and may yet again surprise us all”.
Full version of the article can be seen here.
