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The speakers shared their own experience of business digitalization and discussed how quickly investments into the implementation of technologies into large corporations pay off. Today each company aspiring to be a market leader has to invest into “going digital” and to rebuild its business strategy.

Chairman of the Board of the Skolkovo Foundation Viktor Vekselberg reminded the saying that “Russians are slow to saddle up” and noted that “this cultural trait may prove critical for us in the context of the digital revolution.” The “Digital Revolution” is not future, it is happening now. If the necessary decisions aren’t made in time at the level of separate businesses and at the state level, we will significantly fall behind,” emphasized Viktor Vekselberg.

“The State is a major player on the market in any economy, not only the Russian one. Firstly, there are many companies in the public sector with a lot of employees working there. Secondly, the State decides the matters of innovations application regulation. Thus, it can either become a driving force or a hindrance for the advent of the digital economy. The speed of the development of the economy of an entire country is directly dependent on its efficacy. If we want a dynamic development, the process of change management in the public sector has to transform in the same manner it does in the private sector,” stated Minister of Economic Development of Russia Maxim Oreshkin.

The minister named three main conditions of efficient change management in the public sector – prompt access to the current information on the state of the economy, algorithmization of the decision-making process and the transparency of the latter.

World Bank Lead Digital Development Specialist Jane Treadwell, SAP Vice President Rudolf Held, Bain & Company partner Laurent-Pierre Baculard, co-founder of JUUL Labs James Monsees, IBS Director General Svetlana Balanova, Chairman of the Management Board of Sibur Holding PJSC, Dmitry Konov also participated in the discussion.