IT is always associated with progress; it is slated to become one of the main drivers of the Ukrainian economy and the demand for IT specialists is growing year-to-year despite current economic conditions.
But isthere a role for governmentin
enhancing or at least maintaining this progress, preventing a brain drain and keeping
at most of the know-how inside the country? Of course there is, and it should start
from a very basic practice-oriented and down-to-earth education, leading to the
creation of a favourable business climate in the country. However, in practice,
there is a long way to go to achieve this goal. While the creation of a
friendlybusiness climate in Ukraine often seems to be a daunting objective, the
transformation of theory-oriented education into a practical, tangible and sustainable
skill set can produce results in the near term.
As a technology and IT law practitionerI
hear a lot of complaints about IT education in Ukraine from my clients.While
the quality of Ukrainian IT graduatesis seen to be very high, IT companies
continue to complain that young people, post-graduation, are still ‘raw
material’ and that employers need to invest a lot of time and money in making
the graduates ‘fit-for-purpose’ specialists.
This shouldbe easily curable: government
should engage in a public-private partnership dialogue with business,ask what it
needs, hear what it has to say, adjust the academic program accordingly, and get
business involved in the process.One option may be to create quotas for IT
companies to help finance part of the education of certain IT professions involving
the further employment of graduates. That will not only helpsave costs to the
statebudget, but will allow private companies to save valuable and expensive
time re-educating graduates and adjusting them to real-life business needs.
But is IT education really only about learning
programming skills? I don’t think so. It appears to me that business skills are
crucial to help an entrepreneur face real lifeprofessional challenges,
including the legal issues any IT business or start-up will inevitably
encounter.
From my own experience in dealing with
various IT start-ups, all of them were inexperienced in terms of marketing
their ideas to investors, which is one of the main obstacles to attracting funding.
Further, legal issues are almost completely ignored. For example, a start-up
almost never properly structures and protectsits intellectual property (IP)
rights to the product it wants to sell. But what even more frightening is that
a start-up normally does not even know that well-structured IP protection is
vital to attract serious investment intoanyIT start-up.
The same relates to an entrepreneur launching
one’sown IT business or to structuring partnership relations, which can in
practice takemany forms.
Some basic advice regarding these
issues can prevent a lot of heartbreak, starting from the unsuccessful
promotion of a product to, in the worst case, loss of the whole businessto an
unscrupulous investor, or failure of the business through bankruptcy.
Whether a graduate plans to join a
company as an employee or to launch an IT start-up, theyshould have at least minimum
knowledgeofbasic legal issues at the very early stages of IT entrepreneurship.A
sound legal footing makes the start-up more attractive to serious investors,
giving the investor confidence in the resilience of the relationship saving time
in the due diligence of the start-up’s assets, entering into a shareholders
agreement, or in the security of the IP rights.
This culture should be cultivated and
inculcated at university.A public-private partnership should focus on practical
workshops describing “war stories“ and teaching the basic principles of how to protect one’s ideas
from potential raiders. These programmes should include academics, technical
specialists, business people (especially specializing in marketing), and legal
practitioners. Ukraine has proved to be a country of volunteers and the legal
profession is not an exception;lawyers are generally happy to share their
experience with students free of charge.For example, our firm provides publicly
available information regarding many of these issues on its “Start-Right“ micro-site [www.cms-lawnow.com/start-right]. Together, Ukraine`s
emerging reputation as an IT nation can be cemented for the benefit of the
whole country.
By Olga Belyakova, Partner, CMS Cameron
McKenna LLC
