Russians are coming

Three decades ago, the idea of a Russian warship cruising into San Francisco Bay was unthinkable. Yet on June 20, the Russian missile cruiser Varyag docked.

Even in 1983, concerns purportedly about Russian industrial espionage prompted the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to pass a resolution to evict the Soviet consulate from Pacific Heights, which then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein wisely vetoed.

Now, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is to tour Silicon Valley firms, including a meeting at Twitter, a visit at Cisco Systems and a chat with Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Medvedev’s visit is part of a plan to convert Russia’s oil economy to an innovation economy. Its keystone is to create an innograd — a Silicon Valley — in a Moscow suburb to attract venture capital and woo talented Russian technologists back home.

But there’s more to Silicon Valley than technology and money. It’s a culture; an entrepreneurial ecology not easily replicated, and one that depends on the rule of law, clear intellectual property rights, and a tax regime that supports competition — all problematic in Russia.

University of California-Berkeley Haas School of Business professor David Teece says Russia has the technical expertise, but its government-led scientific community lacks the needed alliances with industrial partners both in Russia and abroad.

Russia’s loss is California’s gain. But then, who imagined the arrival of the Varyag?

— San Francisco Chronicle