Science and Innovation in Russia: a heartbreaking sight
WHAT PREVENTS INNOVATION
Ivan Sterligov, Boris Grozovsky, "Open Economy"Background
In the field of science and innovation in Russia, depressing stagnation has been observed for decades.
In recent years, the state has intensified attempts to reverse the negative trend – numerous development institutions have been created that outwardly cover the entire problem field of the national innovation system. Nevertheless, special economic zones, foundations, technology parks, tax incentives, state corporations and other mechanisms do not add up to a productive self-developing organism. However, innovation specialists are sure that there is no need to create a complete innovation system: the new grows much better in a multipolar and multivariate system.
Periodically there are attempts to understand the reasons for such a failure. But they are closed, fragmentary and do not have a sufficient factual basis due to the fragmentation of the expert community itself. The most voluminous and recent document – "Long-term forecast of scientific and technological development of the Russian Federation (until 2025)" (Word file, 4.5 Mb.) – has not yet attracted due attention due to the huge volume of poorly structured text, a number of annoying errors and poor coordination of a diverse team of authors.
New Innovation ReportRecently, a much more compact and understandable text was published.
It is about the report "Innovative development – the basis of modernization of the Russian economy" (pdf file, 2.9 Mb, 168 pages). Its advantage is a brief and reasoned presentation of the main problems and instructions available to administrative thinking on how to eliminate them. The report will be read more often than the official forecast. This is an important achievement of the authors, given the versatility of the problems of innovative development and the involvement of thousands of officials in innovation management. In addition, the target audience of the report includes business, education and science.
The report initiated by AFK Sistema was prepared by specialists of the Higher School of Economics, IMEMO RAS and a number of other organizations with the support of RUSNANO and Rosatom. Among the leaders and authors of the report are Leonid Gokhberg (HSE), Vladimir Rudashevsky (AFK Sistema), Mikhail Popov (Rusnano). The report summarizes comprehensive statistics of innovation activity, analyzes measures and instruments of state support (federal target program, funds, state corporations). Some emphasis on the topic of nanotechnology is combined with a rather critical assessment of Russia's place in this area (the final stages of research projects are poorly developed, the level of proposed technological solutions is low).
SituationOnly 9.4% of Russian enterprises implement innovations.
Even in Eastern European countries, there are at least twice as many innovative enterprises, and in Germany, for example, 8 times. Our share of innovative products is only 5.5%. Even in the field of aircraft and spacecraft production, only 34.3% of enterprises are engaged in innovations. Only 2.3% of industrial enterprises were engaged in marketing innovations in 2006. The industry leading in this parameter among low–tech is the production of cigarettes (8.6%), which is explained by "acute competition". The share of innovators is the highest among large enterprises integrated into holdings, as well as among not very large high-tech companies. But there are very few innovators in small businesses – even among those engaged in high-tech business. (See Figure 1. Note: IiR - innovations and developments. Gray columns – 1995, blue - 2006)Innovation is not very effective.
In 1995-2006, the annual cost of innovation doubled, and the volume of innovative products increased by only 49%. Russia also lags behind in the number of patent applications, as well as articles published in scientific journals (p. 24).
For most enterprises, innovations begin and end with the purchase of equipment. The share of R&D in the total costs of technological innovations is only 18.6% (purchase of machinery and equipment – 55-60%). Intra–firm science is extremely poorly developed, providing 62-77% of the costs of science in developed countries (statistics by country - on page 23 of the report). Universities are also lagging behind, accounting for 13-23% of science expenditures in developed countries.
As a result, Russia's share in the world markets of high–tech products is barely distinguishable 0.3%, at the level of the Czech Republic, Norway and Portugal. And that is mainly due to the traditional industry – "air and space aircraft". Meanwhile, high-tech markets are growing dynamically in the world: pharmaceuticals and biotechnologies are adding more than 20% per year, the potential of nanotechnology is amazing (the market of nanotechnology products, according to the forecast of The Nanotech Report, will grow from $50 billion in 2006 to $2.5 trillion in 2014).
Even innovative products are fundamentally new – only 1/10 (slightly more than 70 billion rubles, or 0.6% of industrial production). The rest is improved or newly introduced goods and services (p. 43).
Development toolsThe report characterizes the existing development institutions quite unambiguously: "neither in diversity nor in efficiency do they reach the level characteristic of countries that have provided a reversal of negative trends in their development at different stages."
The seven special development institutions created in 2007-2008, including state corporations, are not without drawbacks:
– with a high probability, state corporations can monopolize certain segments of activity, and this blocks competition in the domestic market,
– the individualization of the legal framework of state corporations (a separate law has been adopted for each) makes them dependent "on fluctuations in the political conjuncture, other factors and circumstances",
– the levers of control over the activities of state corporations are imperfect.
This paragraph is especially pleasant to read – its presence in the report did not prevent the participation of state corporations in the preparation of the document.
New means of stimulation are late, their application is postponed. This is largely why "an unacceptably low level of innovation activity remains," and companies have noticeably decreased their interest in the intellectual component of innovation (R&D, purchase of patents and licenses). Tax benefits are "not too large-scale and difficult to administer." However, the authors of the report lay the main blame not on the state as a supplier of laws and measures, but on the business climate as a whole. Enterprises do not have financial resources for innovation (the share of loans and credits in financing innovation activities in 2005-2006 decreased from 17.5% to 15.5%), the planning horizon is small.
The government's measures are frankly fragmented and ineffective, the authors admit. At the same time, most of the planned activities include too much state support in the form of subsidies or state orders, the report says. Such projects are unlikely to be viable without state funding. The quality of innovation policy suffers (see the table).
The lack of coordination leads to the generation of a large number of duplicate and poorly developed documents by different authorities, the report says. The lack of coordination is also the main flaw of scientific and innovative federal targeted programs (FTP), the authors of the report believe. Thus, the nanoindustrial FTP has seven customer agencies and the coordinator is the Ministry of Education and Science. Among other problems of the Federal Target Program , the report notes:
– irregular financing and low return on capital investments (tenders are held no earlier than the second quarter, the start of financing and implementation of programs is delayed until the middle of the year, and "the fourth quarter is declared an emergency, and billions of budget rubles are urgently splashed into the economy, adding excess points to annual inflation"),
– bureaucratization of decision-making,
– weak business participation in co-financing, implementation and use of the results of the Federal Target program,
– the analysis of the results of the Federal target program affecting innovation activity remains unsatisfactory (pp. 76-77, 84-85).
Federal target programs, unfortunately, do not become a testing ground for partnership between the state and private business. Business is not involved in the process of choosing the areas that will be included in the scientific and technological FTP. The situation with the intellectual property of the resulting developments is not entirely clear. In addition, the state can reduce the budget financing of the program, and a private investor in such conditions cannot form an investment strategy, the report says.
But the creation of a single agency in Russia that coordinates all innovative activities is not the best way out of the situation. This is impractical, the authors note, referring to international experience.
Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru21.04.2009