Competition is More Efficient than the Command Mechanism

The article is devoted to the assessment of innovative activity factors in the national economy. The author shows that investments in human capital and the maintenance of favorable institutional environment are important but not sufficient for the innovation-driven development, because they do not provide incentives for innovators themselves. Partially the incentives could be provided by the state but its oversized machine and regulatory bias in modern Russia do not permit to accomplish this function. In this situation the most important elements of the innovative activity support system are the development of market competition and the integration into global value added chains.

Communication in the era of digitalization

Russian scientific, technical and innovation policy is aimed at R&D results mainly in the technological sphere, which have little chance of transforming into commercial products due to the incompleteness of the formation of the national innovation system. Its main drawback is the lack of attention to ensuring effective communication between all participants in innovation. The digitalization of the economy is, first of all, the digitalization of communications. The essence of this phenomenon lies in the acquisition by the communication processes and, accordingly, in giving any communication an optimal, unified and most adequate form for the current stage of scientific, technical and innovative development based on a standardset of signals (numbers). The growing communication revolution not only enhances the role of science and innovation as the main instruments of competition, but also contributes to the process of integrating country NIS into the global network structure. The observed restructuring of the global economic space is accompanied by the emergence of digital platforms that are changing the landscape of the global economy by working with big data, gaining control over the functioning of the information circuits of the global economy and ensuring the interaction of all innovative actors through effective communications.

Fundamental Science, Technological Innovation, and Business. A Brief History of Their Interrelation

The paper considers the major theoretical concepts of the interrelation between higher education systems, science, technological system, and business in creating and disseminating innovations. The purpose of the paper is to consider motivations of the main actors of these systems and problems of interaction between them. Each of such systems creates its own institutions and types of organizations based on their missions. Initially, science had minor effect on creating and disseminating innovations, while higher education and scientific activities were closely linked to each other in European universities. Along with the spread ofhigher education, the links between science and the development of technology are becoming closer because of wider opportunities for information dissemination and appearance of new relevant institutions. It was the state who played a special role in the formation of our modern innovation system that brought new problems to the development of science and business. However, it is business who would play a main role in the creation of an effective innovation system. The development of science requires new subject areas, staff rotation, and discussions, as well as to enlighten the public.

National Innovation System: Construction in Progress

The article examines the evolution of the innovation system in Russia over the past years, based on international data. A comparative analysis of the strengths is carried out and development problems are shown, among which the main attention is paid to the low degree of connectedness of the main actors: science, education, the business sector and the state. In recent years, numerous state initiatives have been undertaken with the purpose to place Russia among the countries - world leaders in the field of science, technology and innovation. The strengths of Russia have been and remain the quality of human capital (secondary and tertiary education) and the knowledge creation (number of researchers, number of patents).Opportunities for transforming generated knowledge into innovative goods and services are limited by the low quality of regulatory and political institutions and weak interaction of individual elements of the innovation system

Academician G. K. Boreskov: Catalysis as Destiny

The article is a biographical outline of the life and achivements of an outstanding chemist Georgy Konstantinovich Boreskov (1907–1984). G. K. Boreskov entered the history of domestic and world science as an outstanding scientist, engineer and teacher. The bright life of the scientist-chemist Boreskov was devoted to the study of catalysis and the closely related problems of chemical kinetics and chemical technology. In his work, fundamental research on catalysis as an interesting chemical phenomenon were harmoniously combined with the successful solution of the most important problems of the chemical industry. With the development of a new catalyst for one of the main industrial processes – the production of sulfuric acid – that G. K. Boreskov began his career in science. Thanks to the introduction of technologies based on his developments, a real breakthrough occurred in some areas of industrial production related to catalysis. In Novosibirsk, Academician Boreskov played the main role in the creation of the country’s first Institute of Catalysis of the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, which now bears his name. No less important is the merit of Academician Boreskov as the founder of the scientific school in the field of heterogeneous catalysis.

Science for Russia: Innovative Tuning of the Econom

The discussion revealed the main positions of researchers on the lines of “state – market” and “national – global”. The dominant point of view is the recognition of the irreplaceability of the market and, above all, the demand for science and innovation on the part of the hightech industry, as well as the recognition of the special role of the state in the development of the institutional environment and the fear of bureaucratization. For all the tempting idea of connecting the country to the global innovation mechanism, the formation of an effective national innovation system (ecosystem) is recognized as more realistic under current conditions. In this regard, the development of human capital and the institutional environment, as well as the digital transformation of the main spheres of the life of society, including the scientific, technological and innovation spheres, are of particular importance. Deep integration of science into the national innovation system is required, which implies the participation of science in the innovation process at all its stages and the connection of science with all types of innovations from technological to organizational.

The Subject and Concept of Innovation Activity (Projection on Russian Specifics)

The role of innovations in the development of society is considered. It is shown that innovations are a routine economic process of enterprise development, requiring the involvement of a number of resources for implementation. The availability of resources, the complexity of their acquire and use determine the demand for innovative approaches to the development of enterprises and the economy as a whole. The article compares the problems of innovative development faced by enterprises and scientific organizations abroad and in Russia. The differences in the problems and tasks that need to be solved are shown. As a result, the approaches to stimulating innovative development that are used abroad do not always give comparable results in Russia. At the same time, there are problems in Russia that are not relevant abroad and, as a result, are not discussed there. The focus on borrowing foreign solutions leads to the fact that the tasks relevant for Russia are not discussed in the expert community and are not solved practically.

Research and Business Cooperation: Comments on Siberian Experience.

Paper deals with the possibilities to improve productivity of domestic academic research through partnership cooperation between actors of innovations ecosystems at national and regional levels. Cooperation between academic research and business plays important role in this context. Main attention is paid to public sector of academic research; all problems are illustrated for the case of Novosibirsk oblast. The opinions of representatives of research institutes of Siberian Branch of Russian science Academy as well as of innovative companies’ leaders were analyzed and reviewed. Main barriers for partnership cooperation were presented basing on this review. It is pointed out that lack of confidence within cooperation between ecosystem actors and therefore limited positive experience of cooperation present significant problem. State support as well as direct financing and adequate institutional environment creation should be aimed to the elimination of these barriers.

On the Issue of the Reproduction of Scientific Personnel

One of the priority issues in the development of the country’s scientific and technological sphere is reproduction and increasing the role of human capital in an innovative economy. The difficulties of becoming a scientist in current Russian conditions are discussed. The special role of the family in the start of a scientific career and the decline in institutional support from the state are emphasized. Internal and external factors that hinder the process of reproduction of research personnel are considered. One of such key factors is the general decline in the authority and prestige of science in the country, which affects the motivational component of young people when choosing the profession of a scientist. It is shown that the creation of optimal conditions - both material support and maintenance of the environment and the preservation of the values of intellectual labor, as well as the presence of development prospects in the profession for young people are important components of the process of reproduction of scientific personnel.

The Foundation and the First Decades of the Activity of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in the Works of Russian and Foreign Historians of Science. Part 2

The article is devoted to the critical analysis of the foreign historiography of the foundation of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. The authors focus on German and Anglo-American historiographic traditions. The authors analyze the works of M. Posselt, V. Stieda, A. Vucinich, S. Werrett, M. Gordin and others. The article shows the the development of approaches to the highlighting of the problem of the foundation of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. The Western historiography was initially dominated by German historians of science who were mostly interested in the role of foreigners (primarily Germans) in the history of the foundation of the Academy of Sciences. The authors of the article show that German historians followed the approach developed in Russian pre-revolutionary historiography. However, both British and American historians of science worked within this approach in the 1950–1970s. In this regard, the authors of the article draw attention to the interpretation of the history of Russian science by A. Vucinich and show its relations to the positivist historiography. An important result of the study concerns the identification of the fact that transformation in the Western historiography of the foundation of the Academy of Sciences was associated with new posmodern methodological strategies in cultural studies and in sociology. Theauthors show that contemporary Anglo-American historians tend to use the social analysis of M. Foucault, N. Elias and other influential contemporary sociologists, which significantly enriches the historiography of the foundation of the Academy of Sciences.