Funding (Photo credit: HowardLake)

While many countries talk about the importance of innovation, funding to support true innovation is lacking. This article discusses innovation in Russia as well as several other countries. While intentions to innovate are great and welcome, capital is critical in enabling experimentation and innovation. It is exactly this fact, access to boundless capital, which makes Silicon Valley unparalleled. Not because there are not equally talented people around the world, but because capital is highly constrained. My first hand experience in India, China, Europe, South America and other countries backs this up. As for governments, our government is not necessarily funding innovation more than other countries. The absence of this support is felt less strongly, as there is excessive venture, angel, institutional and other sources to cover the shortfall from our government. That is not the case in many other countries.

In the last 12 months, there is a wonderful tsunami happening: U.S. Venture Capitalists and investors are reaching out to other countries to invest in innovation. The myth of “I only invest when I can drive to my investment” is being replaced with “we can invent, anything, anywhere, anytime”. Not only is capital abundant, start-up costs are minimal, hence, much more to go around. We are seeing major such examples happening now! The pattern is growing.

One desirable outcome is that we can fund great thinkers in other countries and change the investment pattern. Can we influence the governments to invest more? Not sure. But, we can influence more funding going towards innovation as there are tons of excess capital which can be invested.

What do you think?