Editor’s Note: On Dec. 11, the Kyiv Post held its annual Tiger Conference in Kyiv. This year, the theme was “Ukraine’s Innovative Future.” During the conference, the Kyiv Post asked attendees what needs to happen in Ukraine to increase economic development and innovation.
Ruslan Kokin
Manager at UXhot marketing agency
“Bring order to taxation and decrease the role of the state in influencing business. Support the young generation and its development.”
Reno Domenico
President and CEO of Sterling School of Business
“First of all, (Ukraine) needs peace, above all….To have development, business really needs to grow. The current climate isn’t conducive to that happening.”
“(To have innovation), I think (Ukraine) has got to take advantage of their human capital. The young people here are extremely intelligent, they’re educated classically, and they want to do well.”
Khrystyna Venhryniak
Head of a startup accelerator at Intecracy Ventures
“We founded our accelerator to find new ideas and to implement them in practice… Our startups need help from outside and from us…We are helping to attract investment, but we need more ideas and more new projects to develop.”
Violeta Moskalu
Founder and CEO of Global Ukraine
“One of the drivers of innovation…it’s about the reintegration of Ukrainian expatriates who live all around the world… We have been developing a global Ukrainian network for the last five years after the EuroMaidan (Revolution), and a lot of people with very strong international experience — highly educated and very well connected — (can) help Ukraine restart with a strong global vision for the country. There is a lack of vision in Ukraine — all these old-school guys, old-minded guys. There is a need for new blood.”
Yuliia Kovalchuk,
Co-founder of Vpershe sex education website
“If we don’t have the remnants of the Soviet Union anymore, if we have a different mentality, then we can start developing Ukraine. I have already seen our generation — all these young people here today — the mentality is what drives us to actually look at things in a different way, be more pro-social, use more new technology, actually care not just about what is yours, but also how can I help others — which is really not something that was part of the mentality in the Soviet Union.”
Phil Hudson
Director of Jones East 8 real estate partnership
“Rule of law. That’s it. Simple as that. If you do that, everything else follows. Even defense, I think, is subject to that. If you don’t get rule of law, who is going to fight for the country?”
“I don’t think there’s a shortage of innovation here. Young people are great. It’s just the dead hand of communism followed by oligarchy.”
