Book
Rising Inequalities and Innovation for Inclusive Development: Challenges for Universities and Innovation Policies
During the last twenty years national innovation policies has been challenged by socioeconomic processes becoming more sophisticated in both developed and developing economies. It has become obvious that initial orientations of innovation policies towards economic growth objectives are no longer sufficient without a broader vision of its social dimension. These processes have entailed new theoretical studies and policy research combining innovation and social policy approaches as well as reconsidering the roles of particular actors of the national innovation systems (NIS). Subsequently, an issue of inclusive innovation has emerged as a way to understand how knowledge creation, dissemination and absorption can contribute to meeting the needs of specific vulnerable social groups, offering them an access to better-quality innovative goods and services, education and skills. Universities, being hubs for knowledge creation and transfer, cultural and social progress, have every reason to be regarded as a powerful lever for social inclusion.
Our study is focused on two functions of universities aimed at social inclusion and development in the context of NIS: (1) an actor of public innovation policies and (2) a source of local bottom-up initiatives. We will explore and systematize these inclusive functions of universities through the lens of the Russian NIS context, examine their actual and potential impact on the social inclusion processes as well as capabilities to meet the future challenges of innovative social development.
During the last twenty years national innovation policies has been challenged by socioeconomic processes becoming more sophisticated in both developed and developing economies. It has become obvious that initial orientations of innovation policies towards economic growth objectives are no longer sufficient without a broader vision of its social dimension. These processes have entailed new theoretical studies and policy research combining innovation and social policy approaches as well as reconsidering the roles of particular actors of the national innovation systems (NIS). Subsequently, an issue of inclusive innovation has emerged as a way to understand how knowledge creation, dissemination and absorption can contribute to meeting the needs of specific vulnerable social groups, offering them an access to better-quality innovative goods and services, education and skills. Universities, being hubs for knowledge creation and transfer, cultural and social progress, have every reason to be regarded as a powerful lever for social inclusion.
Our study is focused on two functions of universities aimed at social inclusion and development in the context of NIS: (1) an actor of public innovation policies and (2) a source of local bottom-up initiatives. We will explore and systematize these inclusive functions of universities through the lens of the Russian NIS context, examine their actual and potential impact on the social inclusion processes as well as capabilities to meet the future challenges of innovative social development.
Stimulation of innovation is a priority and a key factor for sustainable economic growth for the leading world economics during the last decade. Innovation became a dominant factor of social and economic evolvement that demands cutting of the period of innovation cycle; strengthening the impact of science on social and economic sphere; significance enhancement of non-economic factors; enlargement of public and corporative expenditures on research, technological and innovation development; globalization and integration of trans-national innovation processes. Global financial and economic crisis and its consequences brought to a head the necessity to speed up innovation at the level of companies, economic segments and national economics as a whole. In this respect development of integration processes and creation of common innovation strategies for grouping of states such as the EU and CIS, as well as for independent governments and companies becomes the crucial approach to enhance their competitiveness in the world economic area. The decision on development of Intergovernmental Target Programme for Innovation Cooperation of Commonwealth Independent States until 2020 was made by the Heads of the CIS Governments on November 14, 2008. The paper sets to analyze the document’s main goals and objectives, its content, the process of its development and possible implementation paths.
Developing policies for enhancing the productivity of university-industry linkages has been a central issue on the political agenda for decades. However, as reality shows there are pro and cons of any policy applied. In this study, we explore these policies based on the "triple helix" (government-industry-university) respectively quadriple helix (government industry university-civil society) model and with a strong focus on the regional, country-specific and institutional context. In conclusion, our exploration suggests that the optimal shape of university-industry linkages portfolios is likely to vary across countries, regions, and institutions by setting different incentives and funding principles. Second, policies should use appropriate metrics to measure the performance of these linkages. Third, a precondition is a multi-level governance arrangement between ministries, higher education institutions, local and regional governments must define the respective roles of stakeholders. And finally, input of regional business leaders with a long term commitment to the region might be an important factor.
Cities possess massive resources, talent and creativity and serve as hubs for knowledge sharing, experimentation and innovation, generating new ideas, embedding these solutions locally and scaling-up successful practices. Cities, however, are not abstract sustainability-making machines; they are places where real people live, work, study and flourish. Cities are made of people, by people and for people. Sustainable measures will have to make sense to inhabitants of cities, making their life more liveable. Furthermore, it is people who drive sustainability and who are its ultimate source and beneficiaries. This vision underpins the notion of people-smart sustainable cities, introduced in this publication.
Many efforts have been done in developing the national innovation system (NIS) concept. However, there are the limitations, which do not allow to make it operable and effective in practice. This investigation attempts to eliminate some limitations of the approach. The NIS is presented as three interrelated macro blocs: business environment, environment producing new knowledge and knowledge transfer mechanism. The principles of performance and effi-ciency measuring of NIS are proposed. The system structure-object and functional approaches to NIS performance and efficiency are applied. The former is used for decomposition of NIS objects of high aggregation level. The latter is available for analysis of NIS efficiency and its factors. The methods allow to estimate the NIS component by component and identify the cause-effect chains of factors impacts on its elements. The key policy tools tailored to liqui-date and mitigate market failure and NIS dysfunctions are proposed. Keywords: innovation activity, structure-object decomposition, functional analysis, effi-ciency, factors, innovation policy, stages of development
The article substantiates the strategic goal of the State energy policy, creation of sustainable innovation system in the energy field. To achieve this goal, there are different forms of investment.
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 results of cross-cultural research of implicit theories of innovativeness among students and teachers, representatives of three ethnocultural groups: Russians, the people of the North Caucasus (Chechens and Ingushs) and Tuvinians (N=804) are presented. Intergroup differences in implicit theories of innovativeness are revealed: the ‘individual’ theories of innovativeness prevail among Russians and among the students, the ‘social’ theories of innovativeness are more expressed among respondents from the North Caucasus, Tuva and among the teachers. Using the structural equations modeling the universal model of values impact on implicit theories of innovativeness and attitudes towards innovations is constructed. Values of the Openness to changes and individual theories of innovativeness promote the positive relation to innovations. Results of research have shown that implicit theories of innovativeness differ in different cultures, and values make different impact on the attitudes towards innovations and innovative experience in different cultures.
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.