Innovation Workshop is a unique month-long "boothcamp"-style course that unites the entire Skoltech incoming class with faculty and esteemed invited mentors to create a foundational experience in Entrepreneurship and Innovation (E&I) for all, as well as to instill a positive "can-do" teamwork attitude in the culture of the student cohort. Students engage in experiential project-based and inquiry-based learning to live through the entire technology innovation "cycle", progressing from idea to product/prototype. This work is performed in cross-disciplinary teams that create real life experience of complex innovation project.
by Skoltech
The course was created in 2011 when Skoltech was launched together with MIT
eng
Fully in English (as well as all study process at Skoltech)
09/2025
The course will take place throughout September 2025
done by CEI
CEI is a indispensable department of the Skoltech, operating as the Institute's internal division, fostering links between entrepreneurship and innovation.
400 / 50/ 100
This is the project of fantastic scale: 490+ students selected from 15K applications to be enrolled at Skoltech, 50+ globally renowned experts as mentors and lecturers, more than 100 Skoltech staff and Faculty involved
The course is less about knowledge and more about developing skills and attitudes necessary to lead successful life in innovation.
Innovation Workshop puts together scientific, technological, social, and economical aspects of innovation in an intense hands-on setting. IW opens with intensive practical work during uniquely designed "Quick Success" lab works proving that technology innovation can be done in five hours of diligent focused effort. In 2018, the most popular Quick Success classes put students into Arduino programming of the self-launched rockets, PCR study of paternity of anonymous donors, creating Stirling engine powered by the cup of hot coffee, and, of course, diverse applications of 3D printing.
Student
projects
projects
Importantly, IW is not a business accelerator or a business plan competition. Some student projects may remain very early-stage and even immature. The other student projects may become developed enough to be continued beyond IW into the student Skoltech tenure. The success of the IW project is measured in academic terms of diligently developing the projects along the three pillars of innovation that are taught at IW: Impact (a.k.a. End User Need), Solution Prototype (provided and validated by good science), and (End User Delivery (a.k.a. Business Model).
Examples of such projects are: programmed robot for treating autistic children, developed sound detection system for unmanned aerial rescue vehicles, assembled electronic nose for industrial safety use, synthesized durable novel materials for industrial engines, programmed neural networks for e-commerce, and employed laser detector to enhance road surface maintenance.
Examples of such projects are: programmed robot for treating autistic children, developed sound detection system for unmanned aerial rescue vehicles, assembled electronic nose for industrial safety use, synthesized durable novel materials for industrial engines, programmed neural networks for e-commerce, and employed laser detector to enhance road surface maintenance.
The only way to fail in the Innovation Workshop, as well as in life in general, is to give up or to free ride. Any other route along the three pillars is success in the area chosen by the student. Students are free to choose any project and encouraged to reshape and even restart their projects as they find appropriate. There are no project failures in IW, only character and experience failures. Skoltech teaches to be productively wrong and strickingly right.
Experts
Invited mentors for the Innovation Workshop are experts with years of experience in industry and academia, sharing their knowledge to help Skoltech's students advance in their chosen career fields. Many mentors are coming from foreign countries, including Asia, Europe, and Americas.
Dmitry Kulish
Professor of Practice, Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Director of Innovation Workshop at Skoltech
Maxim Kiselev
Professor of Practice, Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Henni Ouerdane
Associate Professor, Center for Digital Engineering
Alexey Nikolaev
Professor of Practice, Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Pavel Dorozhkin
Professor of Practice, Director of the Project Center for Applied Photonics
Alexey Salimon
Assistant Professor, Center for Digital Engineering
Lawrence Stein
Vice President for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Dmitry Kulish
Professor of Practice, Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation / Course Lead Instructor / Director of Innovation Workshop at Skoltech
Anna Starkova
Head of Incubation and Acceleration,
Damir Ramazanov
Head of the Center of Collective Use "FabLab and Machine Shop Shared Facility"
Varvara Tsygankova
Head of Events
Kirill Sedov
Head of Marketing and Brand Development Group
Dmitry Kulish
Dmitry is Professor of Practice at Skoltech's Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, where he teaches the Skoltech Startup Funnel courses, as well as mentors and develops Skoltech and Skolkovo startups in the pharmaceutics, genomics, and digital health sectors. In 2020-21 Dmitry has been awarded the title of "Best Professor" and became the top performer in the metric of Skoltech-affiliated startups. For over 30 years Dmitry has been managing and leading Russian and international teams with emphasis on pharmaceutical innovation, product development, and manufacturing. He served at top executive positions at prominent Russian pharmaceutical companies, such as R-Pharm, Nanolek, Binnopharm, and various biotech start-ups. After completing a corporate career in 2014, Dmitry established consultancy "DrugDevelopment.Ru" that he keeps running successfully to this day. The two most prominent projects of 2020-2021 were related to the global development of the vaccines "Sputnik-V" and "Kovivak" which made Dmitry the top-cited expert in the topics of COVID vaccine and treatment development.
Pavel Dorozhkin
Pavel is Professor of Practice at Skoltech and Director of the Project Center for Applied Photonics. At Skoltech he is focused on teaching technological innovations and supporting student startup teams. Earlier Pavel was a deputy head of Industrial Programs at Skoltech – coordinating Skoltech activities with industrial and governmental partners. He worked at NT-MDT (a leading Russian company manufacturing and exporting scientific equipment) as head of the Applications and Product Management. His team successfully developed and commercialized unique equipment and technology for super-resolution optical microscopy with the use of the AFM probe for light localization – with more than $10 million annual export sales worldwide. Pavel is a laureate of the International Prize in Nanotechnology and several other awards for applied R&D.
Maxim Kiselev
Maxim is Professor of Practice in the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Skoltech. He also serves as a CEO at the Human Capital Development Foundation under the Government of Moscow. For about twelve years he remains a managing partner of "MK Analytics-Consulting-Training," full-spectrum management and communications consulting company that he founded. His research interests are focused on leadership, organizational behavior, emotional intelligence, science, technology and society studies, crisis communications, psychological and sociocultural barriers to commercialization of innovative technologies, human response to disasters, roboethics. Maxim has served as Chief Business Development Officer at Technopark Skolkovo since July 2011, where he was in charge of the full spectrum of internal and external communications, marketing, national and international partnerships development, strategy, and system of services for startups. Maxim has been a professor at the Russian Presidential Academy for National Economy and Public Affairs since 1999, and a visiting professor at Moscow State Lomonosov University Higher School of Business.
Alexey Nikolaev
Alexey is Professor of Practice at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Skoltech. He also serves as an invited project mentor and industry expert for startups accelerators and other universities, including Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Moscow State University, and Higher School of Economics, also in Moscow. Alexey has over 25 years of IT and SW development industry experience, working for such companies as Samsung Electronics, Intel Corporation, Align Technology. The focus of his work has been on Research and Development, Academic Relations, Startups Acceleration, Innovations and Entrepreneurship Education, Corporate Innovations fostering, and New Products Design among other areas. He is the author and lead instructor of a series of Skoltech entrepreneurship courses as well as the Coursera online course on new hi-tech products design and marketing. Through his work, Alexey brings to Academia practical expertise for new technical startups and products launch, industry-university-startups collaboration models, as well as the most recent technological and hi-tech markets trends.
Lawrence Stein
L.Stein@skoltech.ru
Dmitry Kulish
D.Kulish@skoltech.ru
Adel Musina
K.Sedov@skoltech.ru
Natalya Andreeva
d.ramazanov@skoltech.ru
Varvara Tsygankova
V.Tsygankova@skoltech.ru
Zarui Udumyan
A.Starkova@skoltech.ru
Course
objectives
objectives
For the entire September, we take 300+ master's students out of their comfort zone before they begin their traditional science studies.
We drive the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation through an intensive hands-on program.
We mix together students and global mentors to generate commercially viable ideas founded on solid science ideas.
We drive the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation through an intensive hands-on program.
We mix together students and global mentors to generate commercially viable ideas founded on solid science ideas.
Schedule
Innovation Workshop schedule consists of daily class work from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. during the four weeks of September with breaks for sleep, lunch, and teamwork. Students learn the next day schedule at 7 p.m. of the previous day.
- I study Data Science and usually I think about programming opportunities when attend workshops but here at the Innovation Workshop they show us so many different opportunities and areas for development such as biology, space, robots, etc. and that makes me want to try myself in something new.Daria FrolovaStudent
- At the Innovation Workshop we work hard but this is the hard work to success. We start from the 1st week of the studies and the energy we get at the event keeps us up to the remaining 22 weeks of the program year in Russia.Oluwafemi OlalekeStudent
- This project helps students to understand how to work on team and project management, how to formulate ideas in such a way that they attract other partners to help students to develop their projects. Those are useful skills for the entire program at Skoltech.Kendrick WhiteMentor
- As mentors, it is very important for us to know our students' backgrounds, who they are, how they behave and tackle problems. Then, at the workshop, we put everything back together into the business perspective and go to a more entrepreneurial side.Maximilian RappMentor