Indicators of innovation activity
Russian business is in no hurry to innovate
Business innovation activity in Russia continued to decline in 2015: the costs of technological innovations in all industries, except telecom and IT, decreased by 10.5% in comparable prices in 1995, researchers from the Higher School of Economics found.
Institute for Statistical Research and Knowledge Economics (IIEZ) HSE has prepared a new statistical collection "Indicators of Innovation activity", from which it follows that the costs in all high-tech areas have decreased and in absolute figures amounted to 25.9 billion rubles. However, in the communications and information technology sector, the volume of expenditures in 1995 prices, on the contrary, increased by 31.6% to 2.3 billion rubles.
The volume of exports of innovative goods, works and services at comparable prices for the extractive and manufacturing industries also decreased by 17.7% to 29.7 billion rubles. Exports were partially reoriented from non–CIS countries in favor of CIS countries - the share of exports to the CIS increased from 11% in 2014 to 21.8% in 2015.
As explained by the first vice-rector of the HSE, director of the IIEZ Leonid Gokhberg, innovation activity "could not fail to respond to the crisis phenomena in the economy, therefore, there has been a decrease in the main indicators since 2013, both in terms of the volume of innovative products and the cost of innovation."
The generally low indicators of innovation activity are explained by the low demand for innovations in the Russian economy, Gokhberg believes: in 2015, Russia ranked last out of 42 countries analyzed in the collection in terms of the aggregate level of innovative activity of organizations.
"In addition, high–tech sectors, which are characterized by the highest indicators of innovation activity in Russia, about 30-35%, occupy a relatively small place in their share of total industrial production," Gokhberg said. Among these industries, according to him, for example, aircraft construction, space industry, electronics, production of medical devices and so on. At the same time, a significant gap between innovatively active companies and the rest of the industry will remain in the near future, the expert believes.
Gokhberg also noted that innovations in the field of environmental protection play an increasingly important role in ensuring the competitiveness of enterprises: according to the collection, in 2015, Russian innovatively active enterprises of the extractive and manufacturing industries spent an average of 101.3 million rubles per organization on eco-innovations.
In a number of industries, the share of enterprises that introduced environmental innovations among enterprises that had ready–made innovations is very high: for example, in the aircraft industry, this figure is 23%, in metallurgy – 38%, in the oil industry - 52%. "This is due, of course, to increased environmental requirements for technological processes and for the environmental safety of products. Many environmentally responsible enterprises get the opportunity to join the production chains of international companies," Gokhberg said.
The revival of innovative activity of enterprises, in his opinion, can be expected only as the macroeconomic dynamics improve and the economy recovers. "So far, this recovery has only just begun. Certain signs of an improvement in the economic situation allow us to expect an improvement in the situation with innovative activity in 2017," the expert concluded.
Recall, according to the HSE research, in 2015 Russia was also in the penultimate, 30th place among the countries studied in terms of a positive assessment of the role of science and technology in society.
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16.03.2017