Skolkovo was perhaps the Kremlin’s boldest maneuver yet. Envious of America’s technological success, the Russians sought to re-create the West Coast high-tech industrial hub in the suburbs of Moscow. But unlike the bottom-up innovation that defines Silicon Valley, where computer geniuses pinched their pennies and built the first personal computers in their garages, Skolkovo was a top-down state-run project that sought to replicate decades of trial and error seemingly overnight.
