Book chapter
Предпринимательский университет как ключевой элемент инновационной системы региона
In book
This book is a doctoral dissertation. It is devoted to technology transfer from the West (primarily from Finland) to the Soviet forestry industry during a period of rapid modernization under the rule of Nikita Khrushchev during the 1950s and 1960s.This dissertation examines the role that technology transfer from the other side of the Iron Curtain played in Soviet modernization from 1955 to 1964. How did technical cooperation with a Western country develop in the context of the Cold War? How and in what forms did Soviet institutions and engineers transfer technologies? How did they deal with more advanced machinery and new expertise? How did they apply the new technologies and how did Soviet domestic research develop? Did these technologies help renew machinery, launch new production and enhance the development of the industry, as expected? If not, why? And, in general, did these foreign technologies lead to technological modernization? In answering these questions, the dissertation sometimes refers to previous periods in order to trace continuities and change.
The role of universities has undergone dramatic changes. Universities no longer only host knowledge, but are now required to develop it further and to contribute to economic growth and support for e.g. companies to strengthen their competitiveness. This is of particular importance for the Russian Federation, where the last 20 years saw the dismantlement of the innovation system of the Soviet Union and ever since has been struggling to close the gap to the innovation-driven economies of Western Europe. When the Russian Federation shifted towards a market economy in the 1990s, economists, sociologists, political scientists and/or management staff educated in modern principles of management were in short supply. To alleviate the situation, the State University - the Higher School of Economics - was founded November 27, 1992 by the Russian Federation Government Decree No 736 to educate future leading professionals in the field of economics and social sciences. Currently HSE is the largest research-led institutions in the field of social and economic sciences in Eastern Europe. Spread over Four Russian cities - Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Perm. Of particular interest is the Innovation Infrastructure Development Program which puts great emphasize on commercialization of research results and entrepreneurial thinking.
This paper studies technology creation and transfer of 95 Russian research and technology organisations (RTOs) into producer organisations in agriculture and mining. Previous findings suggested that in agriculture, the barriers for technology adaption are particularly high due to technological conservatism and the atomic structure of the industry. Although RTOs in agriculture publish more and register more patents, they struggle to translate their success into transfer activities. While technology transfer in mining goes well hand in hand with applied research, RTOs in agriculture either build on new technologies or generate revenues through ready-to-use services. The explanation for this rather short-term oriented demand for services of Russia's RTOs lies in the financial situation of client organisations. The vast majority complain about their dire lack of financial means to pay for new technologies. Consequently, agricultural producers do not generate enough revenues to pursue future opportunities, with far reaching consequences. The situation could get better if the RTOs and the client would agree to longer-lasting relationships.
Abstract: Nowadays innovation development and creation of the link between science and business becomes actual more and more. This problem could be decided by making conditions which facilitate innovation ecosystem emergence. Theoretical aspects of innovation ecosystem are considered in the article. By the example of Silicon Valley, case study of innovation ecosystem is observed. As a result of the paper, we provide some recommendations on innovation ecosystem emergence and management.
We comment on the article by Zagaria et al., which explicates the ““soft” nature of psychology: a minor consensus in its “core”” (Zagaria et al., p. 1), manifested by the discordant character of definitions of psychological “core-constructs”. Zagaria et al. build on the assumption that psychological science should reside in the status of a paradigm, meanwhile the real state of things they consider as pre-paradigmatic, imperfect and unhealthy, from which a transition to a paradigm is necessary.We cannot agree with this provision. We argue that not internal coherence and consistency, but the ability to reflect multifaceted reality, to answer its innovative manifestations in various dimensions and solve tasks that life poses to humanity with an adequate set of different tools not reducible to a single approach, is what makes the value of science. Psychology originally developed as poly paradigmatic science, because its subject has a most complex nature, holistic, yet incorporating many aspects different in their essence and, therefore, requiring different versions of the methodology. Considering epistemology of psychological science from the philosophical perspective implying special focus on the ontological issues, we argue that poly paradigmatic structure of psychology is a virtue, not weakness. Thanks to such a structure, modular, like a Swiss knife, our science may offer the most effective solutions for a variety of problems. Multiplicity of relative approaches is best fit for life and innovation, even though we have to sacrifice rigor and concordance of definitions in introductory textbooks.