Experience and vision of open innovations in russia and baltic region: The FRUCT program

This paper discusses our vision and experience of developing Open Innovations framework program, how it was implemented and why. The Open Innovations paradigm is a new trend for performing research and development that was proposed only a few years ago in 2003. The main emphasis of this approach is on setting cooperation in form of direct industry-to-academia joint R&D project and development of the corresponding competence incubators around the most relevant technologies. As an example this paper presents the open innovations framework program FRUCT that is targeted in development of telecommunications R&D ecosystem in Russia and Baltic region. The need for such cooperation is already recognized by the local industry, academic community and government authorities. In particular Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks expressed readiness and interest to invest into this project by contributing competences and providing some financial support.