Article
Economic and Technological Complexity: A Model Study of Indicators of Knowledge-based Innovation Systems
The Economic Complexity Index (ECI; Hidalgo & Hausmann, 2009) measures the complexity of national economies in terms of product groups. Analogously to ECI, a Patent Complexity Index (PatCI) can be developed on the basis of a matrix of nations versus patent classes. Using linear algebra, the three dimensions—countries, product groups, and patent classes—can be combined into a measure of “Triple Helix” complexity (THCI) including the trilateral interaction terms between knowledge production, wealth generation, and (national) control. THCI can be expected to capture the extent of systems integration between the global dynamics of markets (ECI) and technologies (PatCI) in each national system of innovation. We measure ECI, PatCI, and THCI during the period 2000-2014 for the 34 OECD member states, the BRICS countries, and a group of emerging and affiliated economies (Argentina, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Romania, and Singapore). The three complexity indicators are correlated between themselves; but the correlations with GDP per capita are virtually absent. Of the world’s major economies, Japan scores highest on all three indicators, while China has been increasingly successful in combining economic and technological complexity. We could not reproduce the correlation between ECI and average income that has been central to the argument about the fruitfulness of the economic complexity approach.
The article discusses the new organizational form of the activity of a regional industrial complex in the form of a system and structure that provide for the interaction of innovation-active enterprises and venture investors on the market.
In many organizations implementation of innovation is initiated by the management with application of so-cold “top-down” approach: strategic targets and key success factors with the initiatives of its achieving are formed and consolidated in different regulations, procedures, rules and instructions, which are brought to concrete employees later. The feedback from employees is occurred on the fact of initiative execution in form of corrective procedures locally, but the forming of innovation is still the top-management prerogative.
Such centric approach is mostly demotivating approach for initiative employees, who generate, implement and use innovation ideas. For this problem correction hybrid methods are used. The creation of special department inside the company is supposed to be done. It bears duties of innovation catalyst (usually R&D and HR departments have this role). Among other things this department is responsible for inspiration of average executive on development of innovation, determination and consolidation of corporate values and standards of behavior. In the end, the employees orientation on single corporate targets, the increase of corporate spirit would again “top-down” imposed and the department is just the retransmitter of values that are determined by the management.
How should the politics of relations between colleagues, clients and partners be naturally created and how to establish the awareness by the company employees of their personal responsibility and their personal role in corporate values realization, creation of innovation atmosphere inside the organization that does not resist the innovation? The approach, which is described in this article, supposes the forming of distributed network inside the organization with the transfer to it the general effort in the sphere of creating innovations and implementing the corporate ethics principals.
The article is based on the introductory part of the collection on “Material Culture and Technology in Everyday Life: Ethnographic Approaches” (2009). The author presents a brief review of concepts that have been lately employed in research on material or technological culture. He attempts to show that different disciplines do in fact use adjacent notions and concepts in thinking about materiality, and tries to delineate ways of bringing the different research traditions to a unified platform that could serve as a theoretical foundation for the complex materialistic study of technological culture.
Chapter 6 presents an analysis of Russian innovation system accompanied by an overview of state science, technology and innovation (STI) policy practice.
The authors cover the most urgent institutional cleavages, including the split-offs of science and industry, issues of institutional model of the R&D sector, sectoral discrepancies and regional polarization.
An outline of STI policy framework evolution is presented, including the most recent Strategy for Socio-Economic Development of Russia till 2020 topics. A special regard is paid to linkage-stimulating policy instruments, including grants for joint research for Universities, R&D organisations and companies, technology platforms, regional innovation clusters program and elaboration of innovation development plans for state-owned companies.
The paper examines the structure, governance, and balance sheets of state-controlled banks in Russia, which accounted for over 55 percent of the total assets in the country's banking system in early 2012. The author offers a credible estimate of the size of the country's state banking sector by including banks that are indirectly owned by public organizations. Contrary to some predictions based on the theoretical literature on economic transition, he explains the relatively high profitability and efficiency of Russian state-controlled banks by pointing to their competitive position in such functions as acquisition and disposal of assets on behalf of the government. Also suggested in the paper is a different way of looking at market concentration in Russia (by consolidating the market shares of core state-controlled banks), which produces a picture of a more concentrated market than officially reported. Lastly, one of the author's interesting conclusions is that China provides a better benchmark than the formerly centrally planned economies of Central and Eastern Europe by which to assess the viability of state ownership of banks in Russia and to evaluate the country's banking sector.
The paper examines the principles for the supervision of financial conglomerates proposed by BCBS in the consultative document published in December 2011. Moreover, the article proposes a number of suggestions worked out by the authors within the HSE research team.