The meeting addressed the state's role in promoting engineering centres and developing cooperation between industries and the academic community – and, particularly, leading universities.

As the meeting stressed, the state and business and academic communities should focus their attention on establishing and developing such centres, which are leaders in innovation, the basic elements of which are already available in Russia.

Particularly, engineering services promote upgrading basic industries through the introduction of new hardware and software, and help to facilitate the development of new commodities and to reduce their prices.

The meeting underscored the need to search for the most lucrative engineering centre projects that correspond with major industrial development priorities as specified in President Vladimir Putin's state-of-the-nation address. These include composite materials, biotechnology, IT and robotics.

The meeting analysed the establishment and development of the optoelectronic centre in Mordovia, the St Petersburg State Polytechnic University's computational mechanics laboratory, the magnetic hydrodynamics research and production centre, and other Russian engineering centres.

Managers from Rosnano, the Skolkovo Fund, the Russian Venture Company and Vnesheconombank, and representatives from Sberbank, Vneshtorgbank, various research institutes and businesses participated in the meeting.