An important event for the whole of Ukraine, the 10th anniversary Festival of Innovative Projects “Sikorsky Challenge 2021: Ukraine and the World” will take place on August 12-14 at the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. Rector of Kyiv Polytechnic, “Sikorsky Challenge” Innovative Research Supervisor, Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Michael ZGUROVSKY tells how the innovative environment of Sikorsky Challenge, known even far beyond Ukraine, was born, why Kyiv Polytechnic became the initiator and epicenter of its formation and what are the features of this Festival.
— It is symbolic that the 10th anniversary Festival of innovative projects “Sikorsky Challenge” takes place on the eve of the 30th anniversary of Ukraine’s Independence. We consider the Festival not only a national but also an international event, because its participants are innovators, authors of the best inventions, the best startups not only from most regions of Ukraine, but also from other countries, with which Kyiv Polytechnic has long cooperated in the innovation sphere. They are the United States, Israel, China, Azerbaijan and a number of other countries.
The Festival and the whole innovative sphere of work began in 2006, when KPI designed a strategy for its further development and at the same time studied the role and mission of the world’s best Universities – Massachusetts and California Institute of Technology, “Ecole Polytechnic” in Paris, Aachen Higher Technical School in Germany, Middle Eastern Technical University from Ankara, etc., in their native countries. Studying their experience, we saw a common feature: they do not only teach or only carry out research in these Universities, but closely cooperate with high-tech business. And together with this business the Universities create islets of intellectual breakthrough in their countries, an innovative culture where the best ideas, the best inventions of gifted young scientists, students, sometimes even schoolchildren together with high-tech business are implemented on a massive scale, thus contributing to the social progress.
There are two full-flowing streams that flow in one river: on the one hand, such a business needs a constant supply of new ideas, inventions, startups, and on the other – high-quality staff that grows on these ideas. The Universities create such streams of life-giving intellectual energy for business. Therefore, many of the world’s leading technical Universities are practically begirded by high-tech companies. Real research towns grow up around these Universities, where companies work and students study and work in their laboratories, and new technologies, new breakthrough ideas are born here, in fact, this is called an innovative environment.
Therefore, realizing that the KPI cannot have a successful prospect in the framework of the old model, which we inherited from the Soviet Union, we chose the experience of the best innovation environments in the world. At that time Ukraine did not have such experience and tools of innovative culture. It was needed to create them. And we started doing it in the KPI.
We prepared and submitted to the Verkhovna Rada the Law “On Kyiv Polytechnic Science Park”. It combined interests of four groups of participants. First of all, it is high-tech industry, enterprises, business. Their interests were fueled by new ideas, startups, high-quality staff. The interests of the University researchers (the second group) were not to put inventions on the shelf, but together with the high-tech business to implement them, bring them to market, while remaining in their scientific schools and Universities. And also, to receive a fair reward – royalties, pursuant to the Law on Intellectual Property Protection.
The third group consists of faculties, departments that train specialists. While working with the high-tech business, they have the opportunity to assign their specialists to practice and work in those companies that need them, and update their training and laboratory facilities on the basis of such close cooperation as well.
And the fourth group that is interested in working in this environment consists of so-called venture and investment funds. In advanced economies and in innovative environments, they are always interested in investing in projects that have a large share of new critical knowledge. After all, products created on this basis will have significant added value.
Gradually, these funds began to hunt for highly intelligent projects or startups in Ukraine too … We see such projects are incrementally developing in our country and in the world. For example, Rozetka, Nova Poshta, Uber, the world’s largest online B2B trading platforms Amazon, Alibaba … Investment funds are hunting for projects that can bring back their investments in greater volume. They are not afraid that some of the startups where they invest will be unsuccessful. Silicon Valley statistics show that only one or two of 10 startups “explode”, but their “charge” is enough to cover far and away all venture or risk costs.
Of course, high-tech business did not immediately recognize our innovative environment. The first years they did not believe us, because this model was new for Ukraine. But gradually, somewhere from 2011-2012, investors began to actively visit our Festivals, observe, select projects… And then a rapid growth began. Compared with year 2012 when up to ten of our startups attracted investments of 2 million USD, in 2015 there were 26 startups that received investment financing equal to 26 million USD. A stable group of high-tech companies and foundations has formed around the University. According to the Law on Kyiv Polytechnic Science Park, they became partners of the innovation environment, gained access to our scientific schools, inventions, concluded agreements on joining the “Sikorsky Challenge”…
A shared scientific environment began to form between faculties-departments-research teams and high-tech companies-investors. We did not need financial support from the authorities, apart from innovation activity regulations, laws and acts that regulated, in fact, these relations. Therefore, the innovation process in KPI is not based on budget funding. Moreover, not a single budget penny has been used over the years. It was investment of private business.
If one counts money given by the State to train a student of natural or engineering profile in KPI, who makes inventions and creates startups, and then calculate the funds the private business invests the same year in startups created by these students, the ratio will be 1 to 32. That is, private business responds with 32 hryvnias to every hryvnia invested by the State in a trained inventor!
Therefore, if the State was really interested in moving faster towards the high-tech intellectual development, it would have to invest more money in high-quality fundamental natural and engineering education and science, create conditions for innovative development, and then each unit of funds invested in training of such people (provided that there is an environment comfortable for innovative development), would give a very significant return, as the example of KPI proves. I think that in other countries this ratio is even more striking, so we still have a lot to learn.
Today, the Sikorsky Challenge innovation environment includes more than 120 high-tech companies: more than 25 from the USA, about 20 from Europe, Israel, China, other countries, the rest from Ukraine.
Over the years, the Sikorsky Challenge environment has brought more than 150 new technologies and new innovative products to the Ukrainian and world markets. And all this was made at the expense of private high-tech business. Dozens of startups, initiated by students and even schoolchildren, members of the Junior Academy of Sciences, met their investor and grew into successful large companies. Such companies exist in Ukraine, the USA, Europe, China and other parts of the world.
Examples of successful Ukrainian startups include our two satellites: PoliTan -1 (2013, investors – Academician Mykhalievych Ukrainian Venture Fund and Boeing corporation) and PoliTan-2 (2017, Venture Fund named after prominent aircraft designer Kostiantyn Kalinin, KPI graduate, and Boeing corporation). An important startup for the country’s defense was the Spectator reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicle, which was presented at the Sikorsky Challenge in 2013 by our graduate student Roman Karnaushenko. Academician Mykhalievych Venture Fund invested in the project. The production site was OJSC “Meridian” named after S.P. Koroliov. Then the project passed all the tests of the Ministry of Defense, was accepted for service and now Spectator is mass-produced; the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the State Border Guard Service purchase it, as well as domestic and foreign agricultural companies focused on precision agriculture.
Thanks to the Ukrainian company “Nature Technologies”. a number of technologies for membrane water purification were developed, more than 10 patents were obtained, and as a result a plant was built in Alchevsk in 2010 to purify aggressive mine water, supply water to the city population and metallurgical plant (unfortunately, now it is the occupied territory). Nowadays KPI scientists together with high-tech business are ready to solve the acute problem of water treatment and water purification in the south-eastern regions of Ukraine, especially in those bordering the occupied territories.
These are classic examples of how high-tech products that the State needs, grow out of the idea and scientific research, how they develop, enrich the economy, and raise to a new intellectual level.
I want to speak about the geographic expansion of our innovation environment. At international level we have our representative offices – partner companies in the United States, they are 4 (these are the companies that originated in the KPI and continue to work as our branches). Two companies operate in Israel. There are also companies in China and Azerbaijan.
At the national level, we create Sikorsky Challenge startup-schools in other cities and regions of Ukraine, which teach inventors to become entrepreneurs; they are centers of local innovation clusters. These include local authorities, universities, companies, banks and other participants who are interested in inventions and startups. Now our innovative islets are launched in 20 regions of Ukraine. That is, the infrastructure is formed on the basis of mutual interests. Sikorsky Challenge startup-schools are successfully developing in Mariupol, Kherson, Vinnytsia, Dnipro, Kharkiv, and other cities of Ukraine. We pay special attention to the cities close to the separation line with occupied territories (Mariupol, Pokrovsk, Kramatorsk, Slovyansk, Severodonetsk), on the one hand, morally supporting the people who live there, and on the other hand, helping them to implement important social and economic transformations based on the implementation of innovations.
This tenth anniversary Sikorsky Challenge Festival will have several important panels. These are “Defense and Security”, “Industrial High-Tech and Outer Space”, “Biomedical Engineering and Human Health”, “Agricultural Engineering”, “Green and Hydrogen Energy”, “Ecology”, and “Information Technology, Digital Country, Cybersecurity”, as well.
The international Expert Jury of the Festival selected 160 (out of 315) startups that were shortlisted. It is nice that schoolchildren, members of the Junior Academy of Sciences will exhibit their workings among the “adult” research products. (In previous years, many of these developments were transformed later in perfect startups, and the schoolchildren themselves, studying in this innovative environment, continued their inventive activities as students of our University. We have a number of companies whose founders started inventive activity at school).
In the framework of the Festival, the Ministry of Strategic Industries will hold an International Defense Forum, where conceptual principles of security and defense of the country will be discussed, and high-tech developments of the best startups will be presented. We shall see the exhibition of new defense equipment and new developments.
Panel discussions will take place on many hot topics, including Defense, which will be conducted by Ukroboronprom, Space – under the auspices of the State Space Agency, Energy – under the chairmanship of DTEK, and others. One of the events of the Festival is dedicated to “brainstorming”, when the goals of further work will be discussed and unique roadmaps for better moving towards these goals will be created.
The pandemic is not over in the world, so for the second time we shall hold the Festival using a combined form of participation: partners who will not be able to come will participate in the Festival via online connection, in particular, they will participate in discussions, selection of startups, winners. To do this, we have posted the presentation of startups in Ukrainian and English on the site.
The Festival is always a milestone: it is summarizing, determining the winners and future prospects for startups and their investors. But the main thing is to move forward, to expand the territory of innovation and intellectual environments, breakthroughs in ideas, technologies and their implementation!
And we must all be like-minded people. Personally, I dream that the whole of Ukraine will become such an innovative environment! And I am convinced that it will be so.
The main events of the Festival
International Defense Investment Forum of Ukraine:
Strategic session on the topic “Defense Industry of Ukraine 2030. What awaits the national strategic industry?”
Thematic panel discussions
Exhibition of startup projects, breakthrough scientific and technical developments, including the latest innovative developments in the defense industry.
Panel discussion: “Ukraine’s opportunities for innovative breakthrough in the industrial high-tech and space spheres”
Call for innovative proposals, which will take place in 6 sections:
Defense and security
Industrial high-tech and outer space
Green energy and ecology
Biomedical engineering and human health
Agricultural engineering
Information technology, digital country, cybersecurity
Sikorsky Challenge Hackathon 2021 (KPI Scientific and Technical Library).
Exhibition of projects of schoolchildren-researchers from the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and “Eco-Techno Ukraine”.