Goodbye, innovative Russia!
NAIRIT summed up the results of 2009National Association of Innovation and Development of Information Technologies (NAIRIT) in the framework of the round table "Innovation industry in Russia.
Results of 2009. Prospects of 2010" summed up the economic results of the development of the Russian innovation sector over the past year.
Today, there are about 4,000 research institutes and more than 40,000 innovative companies operating in the country. In 2009, Rospatent registered about 28 thousand applications for inventions in the country, which is slightly lower than in 2008 – 30 thousand.
According to the association's analysts, in 2009 about 1.3 trillion rubles were allocated for the development of innovative programs and projects, of which 1.15 billion rubles (about $50 billion) were allocated from the state budget, which is 22% higher than the previous year (954 billion rubles for 2008). As a result, in Russia about 50 innovative startups were launched. The total potential of Russian innovative companies is estimated at about 8-10 thousand projects.
For comparison, in 2009, American venture funds made investments totaling $17.6 billion, which allowed them to launch 2,795 projects.
Such a low efficiency of the implementation of the innovation development policy is explained by the incompetence and lack of transparency of the work of government officials responsible for the implementation of the largest federal innovation programs and projects. It is noted that Russian developers have a high level of distrust of "innovative" officials. Thus, only 1.5% of the innovators surveyed by NAIRIT said that government officials have done enough for the process of innovative development. Of the rest of the respondents, 8% rated the efforts of officials as average, 37% as minimal, and 53% believe that officials did nothing at all to develop the innovation sector.
As a result, it stimulates the process of professional emigration among developers. In 2009, about 6,100 scientists and scientific specialists left the country, which suggests another intensification of the process of "brain drain". A similar level of outflow of scientific personnel was observed only in 2006, when the state program for supporting innovative development was not yet in effect and scientists did not feel confident in the future.
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