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Today, [Oleg Smirnov] is equally proud of being a pioneer Soviet entrepreneur. He's chairman of I- Cubed-C, the US-Soviet joint venture that sells computer software packages "solutions," as Smirnov calls them.
He and Smirnov met by accident, just two among many US and Soviet computer people brought together during the early years of perestroika. They hit it off immediately. Smirnov liked [James Voigt]'s computers, Voigt liked Smirnov's software, and each found the other to be a flexible but determined businessman.
Now, a UPS truck picks up a shipment of 10 or more Soviet- bound computers nearly every week from Innovation's rural operation. The Soviet venture, which employs 22, has sold $1.7 million worth of products in its first 10 months, said Valery Sedichkin, who is I-Cubed-C's co-chief executive, along with Voigt.
Cleveland, Wis. Wisconsin's most unusual Soviet joint venture is housed in a cramped cinder- block building, originally built to house migrant farm workers, tucked between a trailer park and a farmer's field in rural Manitowoc County.
Inside the narrow building, just eight paces wide and with ceilings low enough to brush with one's hand, Innovation Computer Corp. has made a computer now orbiting the Earth in the Soviet space station Mir, and others in place in the Kremlin that enable the Supreme Soviet to communicate with the US Congress.
On this particular day, three Soviet computer scientists are touring the operation. They have come to Wisconsin for a meeting of the board of directors of a joint venture between Innovation Computer and Moscow's Institute for Automated Systems, a government research organization.
Oleg Smirnov, director of the research institute, was a pioneer in developing Soviet telecommunications software. He proudly recalls creating the first computer link between the USSR and the West, when he connected his Moscow computers to a terminal in Vienna.
Today, Smirnov is equally proud of being a pioneer Soviet entrepreneur. He's chairman of I- Cubed-C, the US-Soviet joint venture that sells computer software packages "solutions," as Smirnov calls them.
"After 10 months, we have a ruble profit, and we have a hard- currency profit," Smirnov says, beaming.
There are many fledgling computer enterprises in the Soviet Union, but Smirnov and his Soviet colleagues say that I-Cubed-C has an advantage over almost all of them.
Vladimir Serdiuk put it this way: "Most joint ventures are with people who are just how to say it in English? moneybags. Or resellers."
What he means is that the US partners in most Soviet joint ventures are purely financial engineers who bring money into the USSR with the expectation of taking a whole lot more money out. Or they are resellers, middlemen who buy products in order to resell them in the Soviet Union.
But I-Cubed-C is a marriage between real producers. On the Soviet side, the Institute for Automated Systems has a long history of designing communications software. On the US side, Innovation Computer makes its own computers, using components built by contractors.
When I-Cubed-C lands a contract in the Soviet Union say, for a laptop computer rigorous enough to withstand a rocket blast- off the order is telecommunicated from Moscow to Cleveland, Wis., and the particular computer that's needed is built within two weeks.
Innovation makes IBM-compatible personal computers in a host of variations using a variety of processor chips, memory drives and peripheral circuit boards.
The computer now in orbit is a laptop model with the well-known 80286 chip, one that's considered adequate but slightly outdated by today's PC standards. Soviet space engineers wanted the older 286 chip rather than the faster 80386, Smirnov explained, because it needed absolute confidence that it would be bug-free in space.
The computer keeps track of inventory on the space station, including food and other supplies and equipment for experiments. It's what the cosmonauts use to know what to order from the next resupply rocket. Former Kohler engineer
Presiding over the American side of the venture is Innovation President James Voigt, a Wisconsin native who spent 10 years as an electronics engineer at Kohler Co. He founded Innovation in the mid- 1980s and met his Soviet partners during a trip to Moscow in 1988.
Voigt, 44, is an easy-talking engineer, without pretense, as is obvious from his modest corporate offices and the white running shoes he wears with his blue business suit.
He and Smirnov met by accident, just two among many US and Soviet computer people brought together during the early years of perestroika. They hit it off immediately. Smirnov liked Voigt's computers, Voigt liked Smirnov's software, and each found the other to be a flexible but determined businessman.
It took two years to push the deal through the sluggish Soviet bureaucracy.
Now, a UPS truck picks up a shipment of 10 or more Soviet- bound computers nearly every week from Innovation's rural operation. The Soviet venture, which employs 22, has sold $1.7 million worth of products in its first 10 months, said Valery Sedichkin, who is I-Cubed-C's co-chief executive, along with Voigt.
Innovation's total sales, domestic and foreign, were more than $4 million last year. It has about 20 employes.
In 1988, in order to get money to expand, Innovation was sold to Boston investor Frank Wright, who operates it as the sole operating subsidiary of Innovation International.
Last month, Innovation International sold a large chunk of stock to a New Jersey investor, Marvin Rosenblum, in exchange for $8 million in precious metal assets.
The goal, said Voigt, is to produce enough net worth in the business to move from the pink-sheet stock listing to NASDAQ, where its stock could be traded in the broad over-the-counter market.
Copyright Journal Sentinel Inc. May 1, 1991