The commercialisation of scientific ideas and technologies is at the centre of CNCP’s strategy for creating secure, well paid and satisfying jobs for former nuclear weapons specialists. While certainly more difficult than backing existing firms in established areas of business, our experience shows that fostering high technology start ups has real potential in the Closed Cities and nuclear institutes of the former Soviet Union Republics.

Of the 90 or so current and completed CNCP supported projects, some 35 could be broadly defi ned as science-based. These include:

• Technologies relating directly to nuclear science, such as using radiation to change the properties of polymers and gem stones, designing and manufacturing radiation detectors, and producing radio isotopes for health care and industry;
• Employing design and engineering expertise from the institutes and nuclear establishments in fields such as energy saving, advanced manufacturing and graphics;
• Creating businesses on the basis of chemical products and processes, including projects involving water purification and the production of special gases for industry.

Experience around the world has shown that, while scientifi c knowledge and engineering skills are the starting point, the difference between failure and success almost always depends on business knowledge and skills in areas such as marketing and staff selection and training, management drive and competence and access to appropriate forms of finance.

Identifying projects with a real chance of succeeding in the market, nurturing development through the start-up phase, securing intellectual property rights, studying the market, and accessing funding require expert advice. Many lessons have been learnt in the UK and other advanced market economies on how best to support science-based business through the early stages. After faltering first steps in the 1970s and 1980s, most large universities and research institutes in Britain now have their own specialised commercialisation units with teams of professionals working to assist knowledge-intensive business development. Within the European Union, exchange of experience programmes have helped spread best practice rapidly from one country to another, creating jobs and accelerating economic growth.

CNCP, in a similar way, seeks to spread an understanding of how best to promote the development of civil sector, science-based, businesses among former nuclear weapons research establishments in Russia and other former Soviet Union Republics. It does this in three ways:

Study tours and seminars enable specialists from the former Soviet Union Republics to discuss technology transfer and business development issues face to face with UK professionals. Twice a year, groups of senior representatives of former Soviet nuclear weapons establishments visit leading universities, research institutes and defence establishments to meet technology transfer and business start-up specialists, and scientists involved in spin-out businesses. Sites visited have included Oxford and Cambridge Universities, the UK defence research company Qinetic, the Royal Dockyards at Rosyth, the Sellafi eld nuclear complex, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and many more. To spread the findings of these tours more widely, the Programme also organizes seminars in the partner countries involving specialists from the institutions which have been visited.

Mentoring based on a wide spectrum of real business development projects initiated from within CNCP’s partner nuclear institutes and facilities puts the theory into practice.

The Programme also encourages the development of specialist commercialisation teams within the partner establishments themselves, to provide support for future business development ventures, following the pattern of the business support units which exist in large research establishments in Western countries.

Through these activities, CNCP’s commercialisation strategy aims to achieve two things. First, through the lifetime of the Programme, we expect to help our partners to establish approaching two hundred civil sector business ventures in and around former nuclear weapons establishments in Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Together, these businesses will generate between three and four thousand new jobs over the lifetime of the Programme, many in high technology areas. A majority of these new workplaces will go to people who were formerly employed in the nuclear weapons complex.

Second, through training, exchange of experience and assistance with establishing new business support structures, such as commercialisation units, incubators and development agencies, the Programme is helping to initiate a dynamic and self-sustaining process of business development. This should ensure that, long after CNCP is phased out early in the next decade, the process of creating new civil sector jobs and businesses in our partner nuclear cities and research institutes will continue to develop and expand.

Patrick Gray
CNCP Programme Leader