Skolkovo Moscow School of Management

History

2001 – Representatives of major Russian and foreign companies propose setting up a leading business school in Russia. Discussions start with Herman Gref, then-Russian Minister for Economic Development and Trade, and Presidential Administration officials.

2005 – Ruben Vardanian, Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of Troika Dialog Group, invites a group of like-minded entrepreneurs to participate in the project.

2006 – A meeting is held between the Russian businessmen and then-President Vladimir Putin. At the meeting, the President welcomes participation of major businesses in the educational reform and the initiative wins the Administration's support. Moscow School of Management Skolkovo project is set up as a public-private partnership within the framework of the National Priority Projects Programme of the Government of the Russian Federation.

September 2006 – Foundation stone ceremony is held on site. President Vladimir Putin attended the ceremony and confirmed that the Federal Government would provide support for the project, noting that the school would be funded with private money.Dmitry Medvedev, then Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, becomes the Chairman of the Skolkovo International Advisory Board.

December 2006 – Executive Education Company-Specific Programmes are launched.

October–December 2007 – Skolkovo presents its first research projects: the report on Russian Capital Market with NAUFOR and the ranking of Russian multinational enterprises.

June 2008 – Three individuals join the project as Founding Partners. The first-ever Skolkovo Forum "Doing Business in Russia: Fine Art of Success" is held. Skolkovo establishes the Skolkovo Institute for Emerging Market Studies (SIEMS) – a leading think-tank on fast-moving economies headed by Professor Seung Ho "Sam" Park and based in Beijing (China).

July 2008 – First books from the Skolkovo business literature series are published.

September 2008 – Enrollment for Skolkovo EMBA, the school's first degree programme, opens. Skolkovo EMBA is due to start in January 2009.

September 2009 - the full-time MBA (FT MBA) programme commenced. The first class consisted of 40 people (selected out of 107 applicants) from Russia and 12 foreign countries.

October 2008 – Russia's largest bank, Sberbank of Russia, supports Skolkovo development by granting the school a construction and development credit worth $245 million for the term of 10 years. November 2008 – Skolkovo-2008 Ranking of Russian multinationals is released. Enrollment for Skolkovo MBA due to start in September 2009 opens. Skolkovo develops concept of Urals Federal University.

December 2008 – Creation of a joint venture fund Skolkovo-RUSNANO is announced.

January 2009 – EMBA programme is launch. Studies of the first class start. Skolkovo MBA announces Skolkovo Challenge contest.

April 2009 – Skolkovo EMBA opens a new enrollment round. To-The-Point Roundtable series are open. Igor Shuvalov, First Vice-Prime Minister of Russia was a special guest of the first meeting.

In June 2012, the first class of Startup Academy started training, and in June 2013, Practicum for Directors, a programme for top-managers coming from medium-sized and small businesses, was launched.

In October 2014, the business school started an updated MBA programme in a modular format. The first intake of the renovated programme amounted to 40 people.

To date (April 2016), 820 students of degree programmes and 12,000 corporate programme participants have completed their training at the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO.

Campus

All Skolkovo educational activities will take place at a new campus located in Skolkovo, Moscow Oblast, few kilometers west of Moscow. The concept and the project of the campus were conceived by well-known British architect David Adjaye and reflect, as he puts it, ideas of the great artist Kazimir Malevich.

Architectural project of Skolkovo campus was presented within the Russian pavilion exposition at the 11th Venice biennale

Skolkovo campus represents a disk with four different-sized buildings located on its roof. The main building, the four-storey disk, will comprise lecture halls, conference halls, a food court and a library. Buildings on the roof are a dormitory, a hotel, an administrative building and a sports centre. A village for the faculty, technological centre and a helipad will also be located within the campus territory.

Construction work on the Skolkovo Campus officially started on September 21, 2006.Skolkovo construction site video and webcam are available online. The opening of the campus is scheduled for September 2009.

The campus is being constructed in the Odintsovo area, Moscow region, on Skolkovskoe highway. The total area of construction is about 26.5 ha, the total campus size is about 60,000 square meters.

Academics

The Moscow School of Management is a member of following associations the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business and the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia (AmCham).

MBA

Skolkovo's first class in 2009 was made up of 45 students. Duration of the MBA program is 16 months. Given Skolkovo's emphasis on learning by doing, each participant will be part of five projects in different fields:

SKOLKOVO MBA Admissions process is different from traditional Business Schools. The candidates are advised to prepare a video presentation instead of traditional essays. This would allow SKOLKOVO MBA Admissions team to evaluate the candidate's motivation to join the SKOLKOVO Community. After evaluating the candidate with video presentation, a personal interview is conducted by SKOLKOVO’s directors, founding partners and Alumni. The interview is conducted in a non-structured way.

Students from SKOLKOVO MBA are mainly educated through taking part in real projects to be developed by teams of 5-7 people. Project results are assessed by the SKOLKOVO founders and third-party experts, government officials, businessmen, faculty and consultants). The School uses active methods of training, so the educational process includes a variety of training courses, role-playing games, training under the guidance of experts in specific areas, consulting projects, practical training and lectures. The core educational principle throughout SKOLKOVO MBA is learning-by-doing, which means that the students take part in action based projects and gain the experience via practice.

Some of the novel approaches used by SKOLKOVO MBA are real-life cases presented by CEOs, role-playing, experiential learning and immersive learning systems to supplement traditional business-school offerings like workshops, independent study tutorials and simulations and business games.

Executive MBA

Launched in 2009, the EMBA program's first class was made up of 25 students. The format of the 18-month programme will allow the participants to stay in a full-time working process. The programme consists of 16 modules, starting in January 2009, and ending in June 2010, including 1 seven-day international module in China.

The large part of the programme is devoted to Leadership Development. Leadership practice course begins with assessment 360, which results in producing an individual Leadership Development plan jointly by a programme participant and his or her coach. Leadership practice also includes team coaching, stress management and skills upgrade in such aspects as communication, presentation, negotiation, conflict management, motivation and others.

Executive education

The school's executive education is aimed at short-term open-enrollment and company specific. The participants are involved in group discussions and work together in plenary sessions, interactive exercises and are able to share their own experience.

Over 60 programmes targeted at senior managers and executives have been held for more than 1000 participants since the programme's launch in December 2006.

Research

Skolkovo research strategy and activities will be based on Centres of Excellence (COEs), with each of them focusing on a particular area of study and drawing its intellectual capital from different academic disciplines. The output performed by each centre will include publications that will be integrated into Skolkovo's educational programs.

Centres of Excellence (COEs):

Leading Think Tank on Fast-Moving Economies

SIEMS aims to be a leading think tank on fast-moving economies, with a special emphasis on Russia, China, and India. The Institute focuses on providing guidance to the society, corporate managers, and policy makers through knowledge creation across a broad range of areas including macro economy and public policy, industry and technology, and corporate strategies.

SIRC is moving quickly to inaugurate four streams of work on the broad landscape of infrastructure-related research in the developing world. These four initiatives are:

1. to launch deals with the issue of tertiary education in the developing world. The purpose of the initiative is to evaluate the performance of tertiary institutions in developing countries and develop the proper metrics for measuring the educational (i.e. both skill and capacity building) performance of these institutions;
2. to explore the growth and evolution of financial infrastructure in the developing world;
3. to design and start to populate a taxonomy of network configuration that sorts real-world experience using a variety of variables and aggregate consistent data over time on performance-related outcomes in developing economy environments;
4. to a distinctive macroeconomic line of approach to cutting-edge issues in the broad area of physical infrastructure in the developing world – roads, bridges, electricity grids, logistics systems, and the like. The research will focus on the so-called "smart" infrastructure, i.e. impeding extensive systems of information technology and sensors into such physical infrastructure. The results of this work will be made available through normal scholarly channels, including curriculum development and seminars and conferences. Also, there will be equal emphasis on deploying SIRC research through hands-on workshops, advisory engagements, pedagogical interventions, “master classes,” and other such practitioner-focused activities.

Skolkovo research projects completed to date:

Skolkovo Endowment Fund

Moscow School of Management Skolkovo was the first Russian educational institution to establish an endowment fund (March 29, 2007). The idea behind an endowment fund is to provide long-term financing for charity and socially sensitive projects. In case of business schools endowment funds allow development of R&D programmes as well as financing scholarships and grants.

In the mid-term perspective the Fund is planned to accumulate USD 100 million. The first contribution to the Skolkovo Endowment Fund was made by PricewaterhouseCoopers and accounted for USD 3 million. Trust assets of the Endowment Fund are managed by VTB Asset Management and Bank of Moscow Asset Management Company.

Publishing programme

In 2008 Moscow School of Management Skolkovo launched its publishing programme. Its principles and key approaches were formulated in 2007 together with a decision on the set of major publishing products.

Works published by Skolkovo include writings by recognized business gurus translated into Russian, special editions of Russian authors in English, as well as reviews of the economic situation and market players' performance.

In July 2008 together with Alpina Business Books publishing house, Skolkovo launched its first series of business literature in Russian that included books of world-renowned authors.

Skolkovo's first publishing product in the English language appeared in March 2008. "The Russian Management Model: Hidden Reflections", a book by Alexander Prokhorov, issued in English, was presented in Singapore at the III Russia-Singapore Business Forum. Apart from releasing business literature items, Skolkovo cooperates with National Association of Securities Market Participants (NAUFOR) and publishes jointly prepared "Russian Capital Market. Facts and Events" review. Together with NAUFOR, Skolkovo plans to follow Russian capital market trends. Given the school's focus on international activities and, in particular, on emerging markets, Skolkovo is considering opportunities to conduct similar projects on financial markets in India and China in cooperation with the school's foreign partners.

Founders and administrators

Skolkovo Founders are 17 Russian and international individuals and businesses. The business include companies like Credit Suisse, GUM Trade Center, Severstal, TNK-BP, and Troika Dialog. The founding invdividuals include Alexander Abramov, Roman Abramovich, and Ruben Vardanian.The partnership is not limited to their financial contribution as investors: the cumulative management experience of the founders, who are actively involved in the educational process, exceeds 200 years.

The school chose a specific form of administrative management. SKOLKOVO is jointly managed by President Andrei Rappoport (until 2011, Ruben Vardanian) and Dean Andrei Sharonov (until 2013, Andrei Volkov).