DYSON: It’s like being in love with a drug addict: I am drawn to Russia. Also, it’s sort of like the United States: it’s big–and worth fixing. It matters. And culturally the Russians are like the Americans; they are practical-minded. [By contrast] when I go to Japan I always feel that I have insulted someone by mistake.
On my optimistic days I would say “absolutely,” and that is certainly what I would argue to people. It won’t be easy. You can’t magically jump off into cyberspace. But at the same time [Internet entrepreneurs] are bringing with them not just technology but ways of doing business, notions of price transparency and the idea that you ought to be able to ask a question and get an answer. And if you have the Internet these [ideas] are low-cost to try out. So I think there’s real hope for Russia. It is going to create a divided economy, but at least the good side will grow while the bad side will diminish.
The education level is high and there is a huge pool of underused talent. What Russians lack are not commercial instincts but management experience. You can be born a capitalist but you have to be trained to be a manager.
IBS [the software company] is profitable. They are the star of the Russian market. But I have to acknowledge that they are something of an exception. [Still] it’s real; they are Russian and they are honest, and that’s pretty exciting.
That’s what’s exciting. A Russian who is going to do online banking is more likely to go to Citibank than to a Russian bank. You can have trust online that you don’t have in the local environment.
I once went to visit the Russian Telecom Ministry with an official from the U.S. government who thought we could just go and explain how deregulation would be useful to the economy. He was sure they would see the wisdom of this and immediately change their policies. [But] there are a lot of people who don’t want change. They may want their country to be rich and powerful but they would rather be rich and powerful themselves.
In the end you just want to let the market work. You want to foster direct foreign investment. Someone who goes in [to Russia] doesn’t feel good when they give the money; they feel good when they see that the money generates a return. And the only way it generates a return is when people are employed, things are built and services are used.
Putting money through some form of corporate invest-in-people program is a lot more effective than simply donating it somewhere. There is one scheme that I love, which is being pioneered by Ford and Delta: giving all your employees a PC and an Internet connection. In the United States that may not be very exciting, but it would be in Russia. It is not like just giving people a car; giving a PC and an Internet connection says “We respect you as an intellectual human being.” And Russia is a very education-conscious country: the way to get to people is to say “Do this for the good of your children.” If the employees don’t get on the Internet themselves, they have children who will.
Of course, this doesn’t help the poorest of the poor, but you need someone rich to employ someone poor. You want them to be investing, not excluding–and a PC is much more of an investment than a car.
What I like about this world is that you can have competing rule sets. As long as you disclose those rules, people can decide where they want to trade. They can choose their market.
