Infrastructure of the innovation sphere: financial aspect. Innovation infrastructure of the Russian Federation and its development
Lecture 3. INNOVATION INFRASTRUCTURE
Plan:
3.1. The concept of innovation infrastructure.
3.2. Elements of innovation infrastructure and their characteristics.
The concept of innovation infrastructure
Infrastructure of innovation activities– a set of subjects of innovation activity that provide the conditions necessary for the implementation of innovation activity and the functioning of innovation processes.
Currently, there is a fairly extensive network of organizations promoting the development of innovation activities (Table 1).
Table 1General scheme of innovation infrastructure
| Components of AI | Type of organization |
| Production and technological | Technopark, center for collective use of equipment, etc. |
| Consulting | Technology transfer center, business incubator, consulting in the field of economics and finance, technology, marketing, foreign economic activity |
| Financial | Budgetary organization, extra-budgetary funds, venture funds |
| Personnel | System for training specialists in the field of technological and scientific management; personnel development system in the field of innovation |
| Information | State system of scientific and technical information, regional information networks, Internet |
| Sales | Foreign trade association, specialized intermediary company, Internet, exhibition |
It should be noted that innovation infrastructure (AI) objects can solve only part of the problems, and the successful development of innovation activities cannot be made solely dependent on the availability or quantity of corresponding infrastructure objects.
To function successfully, an innovation system must also have a favorable regulatory framework.
Elements of innovation infrastructure and their characteristics
Let us characterize the role of individual infrastructure elements and the problems of their development.
1. Production and technological infrastructure designed to create conditions for small enterprises to access production resources. This includes technology parks, innovation and technology centers, technology clusters, etc.
The Technopark (TP) rents out its space to innovative enterprises on better terms than just commercial rent. In addition to rent, a set of general services (fax, telephone, Internet access, duplication, secretarial, accounting and legal services, etc.) are also provided here on preferential terms. The experience of the TP shows the correctness of the strategy and its high efficiency. In addition, here, through the exchange of information and experience between various enterprises, new projects, new solutions, sales schemes, etc. are born. It is also important that in the TP there are no conditions for conducting shadow activities.
The organization of these structures is implemented through the development of a territory equipped with the necessary communications and production infrastructure, where small enterprises (SE) could first rent and, if they have the financial capacity, buy production space. Another option is to organize TP on the basis of empty or idle enterprises, of which there are quite a lot in almost all regions. Such projects are already beginning to be implemented in a number of regions.
Recently it has become fashionable to organize clusters – a collection of enterprises located in one limited territory (in a large enterprise or within one city) and more or less closely connected by production ties.
Centers for collective use of production equipment. It is obvious that providing all small enterprises with modern production equipment is impossible due to the fact that the relatively small volumes of their production do not allow the effective use of modern production equipment. With the cost of a modern machine being several hundred thousand dollars, only a fairly large enterprise can afford its purchase and effective operation when producing its own products. Thus, for this reason, a huge number of small and medium-sized enterprises are cut off from using new technologies in production. A way out of this situation is possible through the collective use of equipment in service centers.
The organization of collective use centers makes it economically feasible to provide a large number of enterprises with access to modern technologies and provides many positive side effects that contribute to the transfer of the Russian economy to an innovative path of development.
2. Consulting infrastructure is a collection of consulting organizations. Innovative activity has many specific features, knowledge of which can only be acquired through practical experience. The creation of small innovative enterprises (SIEs) by “non-professional” managers leads to the fact that the survival rate of such enterprises is usually low. That's why ensuring access to professional advice(financial, economic, marketing, as well as foreign economic activity) seems to be one of the means of increasing the efficiency of using funds allocated for innovative development.
A comprehensive solution to many of these issues is called upon to address technology transfer centers (TTCs). Currently, digital technology centers are created, as a rule, at large universities and academic institutes, because they have the most significant potential in the development of new technologies. CTTs are created either as structural divisions of organizations with innovative developments, or as independent legal entities.
The main problems that began to appear with the beginning of the development of the central heating network were the lack of qualified personnel to staff them. If the personnel problem is solved, CTTs can become one of the important structural elements stimulating the development of innovative activities in the regions.
3. Personnel training infrastructure. If we consider in more detail the problems of personnel training, we should note a whole range of problems in this area. As noted above, problems with personnel providing research and development are growing; there is an acute problem of a shortage of mid-level technical personnel and skilled workers. The problem of enterprises producing innovative products has recently been the aging of personnel who are carriers of key technologies. Without the entry of young workers, the technologies used may be partially lost.
When developing a personnel training system, it is necessary to ensure balanced training in all areas that ensure innovative activity. However, it should be noted that currently most enterprises (both large and small) do not have specialists who can competently ensure the promotion of new products to the market. The problem can be solved only by organizing targeted work on training such personnel with a planning horizon of 5–10 years (time for basic training of personnel and their acquisition of practical work skills).
Currently, dozens of universities across the country are training specialists in the field of management and marketing of high-tech production, but the effectiveness of this work is low. Only a small number of graduates go to work in their specialty; there are significant problems even with recruitment small quantity technology transfer centers created with the participation of Rosnauka.
Finally, it should be noted that there is a shortage of qualified teachers for personnel training. In many universities, teaching is conducted by specialists who have no practical experience in the issues they teach students. Training is conducted using foreign developments and manuals that do not fully reflect Russian specifics and realities, resulting in specialists who then have to gain experience over the course of several years through trial and error.
In this regard, the role of the consulting system should once again be noted.
Since personnel training is a rather long and inertial process, and the onset time irreversible changes In many enterprises focused on the production of high-tech products, the time frame for solving the personnel problem may be shorter; it is necessary to provide for the creation and development of a consulting system for industrial enterprises in the field of innovation and promotion of high-tech products to markets. This system does not replicate the CTT system, although it should work closely with it, but provides one-time consulting on individual issues that arise for enterprises. Perhaps it is advisable to build this system as a system for express training in the basics of innovative approaches.
4. Information infrastructure associated with providing access to information. There is a fairly extensive network of organizations in this area, including a regional system of state centers for scientific and technical information, structures supporting small businesses, and regional information networks. A large number of information on innovation issues is posted on the Internet.
The current system quite effectively solves a number of problems. Thus, technical information is currently available in large volumes in almost all areas of science and technology. Access to patent information is not particularly problematic. The main information that can influence the solution of innovative development problems and for which there is a significant deficit is related to information about markets.
Another group of issues of information support for innovation activities is related to communicating information about new developments to potential users and organizing consultations on their use.
Partially this problem can be solved through the creation of a network of information and analytical centers in priority areas of development of science and technology, as well as on innovation topics. Work is needed to organize the collection, analysis and systematization of information on completed R&D in the regions and in Russia as a whole. Significant efforts should be directed toward communicating information about completed R&D to interested consumers.
5. Financial infrastructure includes structures that provide access to innovative enterprises (both large and small) to financial resources. Currently, there are quite a few financial instruments, but statistical studies show that the main source of financing for the development of innovative industrial enterprises is their own funds. Bank loan still remains too expensive and short for the development of innovative activities.
State budget resources mainly available for large enterprises.
Venture investing, about which there has been a lot of discussion lately, still remains exotic for Russia. It should be noted that recently in many regions there is a creation regional venture funds. In most of these cases, the word “venture” in the name reflects only a fashionable trend. Essentially, most of these structures are innovation support funds aimed at financing R&D and do not involve the creation of new enterprises.
Recently, guarantee structures and funds have been created in a number of regions, which should solve the problems of securing loans to small enterprises in the banking system. Successful development is also achieved leasing schemes purchases of high-tech equipment by small enterprises.
Another source of innovation funding is participation of enterprises in international projects. Expansion of financial receipts from this source is possible with the development of a network of technology transfer centers with the participation of foreign partners.
6. Sales infrastructure. Sales is one of the key factors in the competitiveness of a modern enterprise. Due to objective reasons related to the history of the development of Russian enterprises, most of them do not have the personnel and skills in the field of marketing innovative products, as a result of which there is no active work to promote innovative products to markets on the part of their manufacturers.
This problem is even more pressing when entering global markets.
In foreign markets there is practically no even initial information about the products of Russian innovative enterprises, therefore, without serious work in this direction, one cannot hope for a radical change in the situation with the entry of these enterprises into the world markets of high-tech products and an increase in their share from 0.3–0.5% ( currently) to levels comparable to those of developed countries.
In this regard, the creation of an effective system for promoting innovative products of Russian enterprises to the domestic and world markets is an extremely urgent task that determines the success of the entire program of transferring the Russian economy to an innovative development option.
Classic promotion methods ( participation in exhibitions, sales via the Internet), characteristic of traditional products, do not work well for innovative products; the characteristics and consumer properties in the first stages of promotion are not familiar to potential buyers. The huge shortage of qualified personnel for this activity allows us to consider the provision of this resource as a key, if not the main factor in accelerating the innovative development of the economy.
The solution to the problem can be found in creating structures for collective access to markets(by analogy with Soviet foreign trade organizations that served the export of industries). To staff such structures, it is possible to recruit a sufficient number of qualified specialists who will provide not one, but several enterprises at once, united on a regional or industry basis.
Naturally, it is necessary to develop other methods of promotion that currently exist: through exhibition activities, professional associations of enterprises, intermediary firms and a system of consulting and marketing firms.
Innovation infrastructure also needs a legislative framework - a set of legislative provisions on business activities that ensure freedom and alternative use of market objects of their technical and economic potential.
Review questions
Innovation infrastructure of the Russian Federation and its development
Introduction
Currently, the creation of a national innovation infrastructure in Russia is a key task not only for the scientific and technical sphere, but also for increasing the competitiveness of the domestic economy. Commercialization of technologies is part of an integral mechanism for the creation and implementation of innovations within the national innovation infrastructure. In this work, we will consider the concept and tasks of innovation infrastructure, elements of the innovation infrastructure of the Russian Federation, the essence and principles, classification of scientific organizations, characteristics and types of small innovative enterprises (companies), and also indicate the goals and objectives of the innovation strategy of the Russian Federation until 2020.
1. Concept and tasks of innovation infrastructure
innovation infrastructure science
Innovation infrastructure is understood as a set of organizations that facilitate the implementation of innovative projects, including the provision of management, logistics, financial, information, personnel, advisory and organizational services.
Innovation infrastructure is the link between the results of scientific research and the market, state and business sector of the economy.
Typically, at least the following types (subsystems) of innovation infrastructure are distinguished:
financial: various types of funds (budgetary, venture capital, insurance, investment), as well as other financial institutions, such as, for example, the stock market, especially in terms of high-tech companies;
production and technological (or material): technology parks, innovation and technology centers, business incubators, etc.;
informational: actual databases and knowledge and access centers, as well as analytical, statistical, information, etc. centers (i.e. organizations providing services);
personnel: educational institutions on training and retraining of personnel in the field of scientific and innovation management, technological audit, marketing, etc.;
expert consulting: organizations engaged in providing services on issues of intellectual property, standardization, certification, as well as consulting centers, both general and specializing in certain areas (finance, investment, marketing, management, etc.).
In all of the above cases, subjects of innovative activity are provided with access to certain types of resources and services they need, namely:
to financial resources directly, or through obtaining a share in the market value of entities;
to buildings, structures, equipment, devices, etc.;
to the necessary information;
to human resources of the required qualifications, or systems that ensure the improvement of their qualifications;
various types of special services that can be provided to a given subject of innovative activity.
The objectives of the innovation infrastructure are expressed as follows:
selection of projects based on an objective examination system;
creating favorable starting conditions for the development of small innovative technology-oriented firms;
support for mechanisms of interaction with large centers;
formation of a material and technical base for the creation and development of small innovative firms;
creation of information networks ensuring the development of small firms, the possibility of their connection to international networks;
entrepreneurship training in the scientific and technical field.
Elements of innovation infrastructure
With the help of various elements of innovation infrastructure, the following main tasks are solved:
Information Support;
production and technological support for innovative activities;
holding exhibitions of innovative projects and products;
providing consulting assistance;
training, retraining and advanced training of personnel for innovative activities.
The key elements of the innovation infrastructure are:
) technology park structures:
science parks, technology and research centers;
innovation, innovation-technological and business-innovation centers;
technology transfer centers;
business incubators and technology incubators;
virtual incubators;
technopolises, etc.
) information technology systems:
databases of scientific and technological information, technical-legal and technical-economic information, other databases.
Let us consider separately the presented elements of the innovation infrastructure.
Information technology systems
One of the key elements of innovation infrastructure is information technology systems. These systems are based on databases containing a wide variety of information about the subjects and results of innovation activities.
The rapid development of Internet technologies and other new information technologies can significantly increase the efficiency of solving the problem of information support for innovative activities. The use of telematics networks for interactive remote access to databases of information technology systems contributes to more efficient implementation of innovative processes.
Examples of the successful functioning of this element of innovation infrastructure are the information technology systems ARIST, CORDIS, EPIPOS, supported by EU countries.
Thus, the scientific and technological information service ARIST is an information tool for obtaining information about innovative technologies existing on the market. It is used to connect innovative organizations with relevant technology with potential clients. ARIST provides a range of information services, which can be divided into three groups:
Scientific and technological information to analyze what stage a particular innovative technology has reached.
Technical and legal information - topics such as industrial property (patents, trademarks, utility models, national and foreign technical standards), as well as legislation, regulations of different countries.
Techno-economic information includes supply and distribution market studies.
Technopark structures.
Currently, there are many different forms of technology park structures in the world:
science parks, technology and research parks,
innovation, innovation-technological and business innovation centers,
technology transfer centers,
business incubators and technology incubators, virtual incubators,
technopolises and others.
Between some of these forms there are fundamental differences associated with different functional purposes, specific organizational forms, and the range of tasks to be solved, while between other technology park structures the difference is more of a terminological nature, sometimes associated with the peculiarities of the development of innovation infrastructure in a particular country.
We can distinguish three main groups of technology park structures:
. incubators,
. technology parks,
. technopolises.
Let us consider the distinctive features, characteristic features of each of these forms and the experience of their functioning in different countries.
Incubators -These are multifunctional complexes that provide a variety of services to new innovative companies at the stage of emergence and formation.
In other words, incubators are designed to “hatch” new innovative enterprises, assisting them at the earliest stages of their development by providing information, consulting services, renting premises and equipment, and other services.
The main objective of the incubator is to create a favorable environment for the development and support of small businesses by creating organizational and economic conditions that stimulate their activities (providing information, consulting services, renting premises and equipment, and other services).
The incubator usually occupies one or more buildings. Incubation period client firm usually lasts from 2 to 5 years, after which the innovative firm leaves the incubator and begins independent activities.
The incubator, as a form and element of innovation infrastructure, is in constant development, the logic of which largely helps to understand the history of the emergence and spread of incubators.
Under technoparkmeans a compactly located complex, the functioning of which is based on the commercialization of scientific and technical activities and the acceleration of the advancement of innovations in the sphere of material production.
Distinctive features of the technology park:
the complexity of the legally independent firms and organizations included in the technological park in the scientific and production cycle of creating innovations (scientific institutions, universities, industrial enterprises, service departments, etc.);
compact location;
limited space;
availability of quality infrastructure;
location in ecologically clean picturesque areas;
high efficiency of innovation activities.
The concept of a technology park is quite close to the concept of an incubator in the field of innovation. Both of these elements of innovation infrastructure are complexes designed to promote the development of small innovative companies and create a favorable, supportive environment for their functioning. The difference between them is that the range of client companies of technology parks, unlike incubators, is not limited only to newly created innovative companies at the earliest stage of development. The services of technology parks are used by small and medium-sized innovative enterprises that are at various stages of commercial development of scientific knowledge, know-how and high technology. In other words, technology parks are not characterized by a strict policy of constant renewal and client rotation, typical of incubators in the field of innovation.
The main structural unit of the technology park is the center. Typically, the structure of a technology park includes:
innovation and technology center;
consultation center,
information Center,
marketing center,
Industrial Zone.
Each of the technology park centers provides a specialized set of services, for example, services for retraining specialists, searching and providing information on a specific technology, legal advice, etc. The technology park may include an incubator as a separate structural element.
Technopolis,which is often called a scientific city or science city, “city of brains”, is a large modern scientific and industrial complex, including a university or other universities, scientific research institutes, as well as residential areas equipped with cultural and recreational infrastructure.
The purpose of building science cities and technopolises is to concentrate scientific research in advanced and pioneering industries, to create a favorable environment for the development of new knowledge-intensive industries in these industries. As a rule, one of the criteria that a technopolis must satisfy is its location in picturesque areas, harmony with natural conditions and local traditions.
Currently, the successful development of innovation infrastructure in many countries is associated with integration processes that make it possible to achieve synergistic effects by combining and coordinating the activities of various elements of innovation infrastructure. In our country, the creation of various innovation unions and associations plays a positive integrating role in the development of innovation infrastructure.
One example is the beginning of the creation of a territorially isolated complex - the Skolkovo innovation center, which creates an unprecedented legal regime that minimizes administrative barriers and tax burdens for resident companies. A technical university is being created within the Skolkovo Innovation Center with the goal of achieving the level of the world's leading universities in the future. A system of state co-financing of innovative projects of private companies is being formed through the management company of the Skolkovo innovation center, the federal state autonomous institution "Russian Fund for Technological Development" and other development institutions. In relation to companies with state participation, a system is being formed to support the development and implementation of innovative development programs by them.
The essence and principles of formation of organizational structures of innovative enterprises
Solving the problems facing innovative enterprises (IEs) (independent or part of associations, concerns and other high-level organizational forms) is carried out within the framework of certain organizational structures. They provide for the presence of a certain composition of divisions or individual functionaries who are in established relationships and interactions, and within the framework of intrastructural activities of one kind or another, aimed at performing certain functions and achieving the private and general goals of the functioning of the individual entrepreneur.
The organizational structure of an individual entrepreneur is a set of scientific, design, design, technological and information units (laboratories, departments, sectors, groups) that carry out the main creative activities to create an intellectual product - innovations of a certain profile and specialization, as well as production, auxiliary and management units, ensuring the implementation of thematic R&D plans and the implementation of created innovations. The organizational structure of any individual entrepreneur must correspond to its target and functional structure at each period of time. In practice, such a complete coincidence of structures may not exist. This is explained by the fact that in the conditions of dynamic market relations some goals and functions disappear and new ones appear in accordance with new ideas, tasks, solution methods, etc. .
The fundamental factors under the influence of which the organizational structure of an individual entrepreneur is formed are:
features of the field of knowledge, science and technology, production;
degree of independence of the individual entrepreneur or place in the structure of the association;
directions of performed R&D and specific tasks of the thematic plan;
the level of specialization and degree of cooperation of a particular individual entrepreneur and its place in the social division of labor, as well as the technology and level of automation of scientific, design, economic and managerial work;
deadlines for solving scientific and technical problems;
structure of available resources of individual entrepreneurs (labor, material, information and financial) and trends in their development.
The most important principles for building and improving IP structures are:
the primacy of goals, functions, tasks and the secondary nature of the units that solve them;
rational division and cooperation of labor (external and internal) and expedient specialization of departments and performers, which in turn creates conditions for the scientific organization of labor of workers at all levels, acceleration of document flow and the passage of information of all types vertically and horizontally, shortening the cycle and reducing the costs of creation innovation;
hierarchical interaction of structural units with the minimum possible number of hierarchy levels to ensure the shortest paths for information flow from top to bottom and bottom to top;
ensuring controllability, for which each hierarchical level should optimally have 5-6, but no more than 8-9 organizational cells;
specialization of each structural body at any level to perform a possibly narrow range of functions provided for by the regulations.
Classification of scientific organizations by sectors of science and types of organization
Organizations for which scientific research and development constitute the main activity are not always characterized by belonging to a particular sector of the economy, or by organizational and legal form of ownership. In this case, the following classification of scientific organizations applies by sectors of science and types of organizations, united by organizational characteristics, nature and specialization of work.
Sector Type of scientific organization State Organizations of ministries and departments that ensure government administration and meet the needs of society as a whole (public administration, defense, public order, health care, culture, leisure, social security, etc.), including federal and local authorities. Non-profit (non-profit) organizations wholly or mainly financed and controlled by the government, excluding organizations related to higher education. They primarily serve the government and do not aim to make a profit, but are primarily engaged in research into public and administrative functions. Entrepreneurial All organizations and enterprises whose main activity is the production of products or services for sale (other than services in the higher education sector), including those owned by the state. Private non-profit (non-profit) organizations, mainly serving the above-mentioned organizations. Higher education Universities and other higher education institutions, regardless of funding sources or legal status. Research institutes, experimental stations, clinics under the direct control or management of higher education institutions or associated with them. Organizations directly serving the sphere of higher education (organizations of the system of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation) Private non-profit (non-profit) Private organizations that do not aim to make a profit (professional societies, unions, associations, public, charitable organizations, foundations), except for foundations, more than half publicly funded, which belong to the public sector. Private individual organizations.
Small innovative companies (enterprises) in the Russian Federation
Among the organizational structures of innovation management, small enterprises stand out. It is not large businesses that find themselves in the most difficult situation, but a small innovative company (enterprise) (MIC, SIP) - a knowledge-intensive enterprise belonging to the so-called high tech companies, which produces goods or services of a certain scientific and technical level.
Types of small innovative companies.
Small innovative companies are of the following types:
. MIC in the administrative structure of large research institutes and NGOs.They are the very first, trial market form of small knowledge-intensive companies. The organizers were almost always the leadership of the parent organization, the MIC actually functioned as one of the administrative departments of the parent organization, being part of its bureaucratic apparatus, and its employees carried out orders from the parent organization through the accounts of the MIC, inflating their wages by 5-10 times. .
. "Shadow" MIC- were organized and registered by employees independently, without the consent of the administration of the parent organization, in which the overwhelming number of their founders and owners worked. Formally, the activities of such MICs are criminally punishable. However, “shadow” MICs had two advantages compared to the MICs described above:
They carried out the initial accumulation of financial resources for further, independent activities;
Scientific and technical personnel received an idea of what private enterprise is.
However, the most important drawback remained - the lack of social risk.
. MIC of a self-sustaining administrative unitseparated from large research parent organizations, which were entirely their former departments or laboratories. Such MICs have almost completely ceased their activities, firstly, due to the cessation of government funding and, secondly, due to a change in the point of view of the leadership of the parent organization.
. Knowledge-intensive "free-floating" MICs- purely commercial enterprises, the creation of which was a truly responsible decision for the people who made it, since it implied initial stage complete absence fixed assets, raw materials, working capital, combined with the abandonment of social guarantees that existed when working in the parent organization.
Small innovative enterprises need constant support from government authorities, local government and non-profit organizations. First of all, a broad legal environment is needed for the functioning of SIE. Legislative and regulatory acts form a system of economic, financial, material and other incentives that guarantee the necessary support for certain categories of small businesses. Installed general rules their behavior in a market economy, while bans on illegal business are introduced. At the same time, legislative acts establish measures to protect business entities from negative influence external environment, including from illegal actions of authorities at various levels.
Government support is provided at the federal, regional and local levels. The basis of government support measures at any level is the federal law“On state support for small businesses in Russian Federation» dated June 14, 1995 (as amended on March 21, 2002).
In order to stimulate the innovative activity of small and enterprise enterprises, the methods of government influence are divided into direct and indirect. Direct methods of state regulation of SIE development are manifested in various forms financing, in stimulating cooperation of small innovative enterprises with universities, large enterprises and research and production complexes, in the preferential right to receive orders for the development and production of products and the provision of services for government needs. Direct methods include targeted programs support of small enterprises in the innovation sphere. Indirect methods of government influence include legislative and legal acts, which are very diverse and relate to many areas of SIE activities. Indirect methods include liberalization of taxation, in particular the use of tax benefits (reduction of tax rates, “tax holidays”, etc.).
legislative;
financial;
administrative and organizational (registration, licensing and certification procedures);
informational;
tax;
property;
consulting;
personnel (training and retraining);
commodity;
production and technical;
insurance
Many authorities are responsible for implementing support for small businesses. These include the Federal Antimonopoly Service, the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of the Russian Federation, the Russian Agency for the Support of Small and Medium Businesses and its regional branches, the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy, Entrepreneurship and Tourism, the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and departments (committees, commissions, etc.) to support small businesses, which are part of the structure of local governments. In addition, numerous non-profit unions and associations support small businesses.
6. Goals and objectives of forming the innovation infrastructure of the Russian Federation in market conditions
Russia sets itself ambitious but achievable long-term development goals, which include ensuring a high level of well-being of the population and consolidating the country's geopolitical role as one of the leaders setting the global political agenda. The only possible way to achieve these goals is the transition of the economy to an innovative socially oriented development model. The global economic crisis of 2008-2009 complicated the implementation of the set goals, led to a reduction in private business spending on innovation and slowed down the development of the Russian innovation system. Nevertheless, the difficult economic situation in the short term does not mean the need to revise long-term development goals, but rather causes increased requirements for the pace and quality of economic development in the period up to 2020.
The goal of the strategy is to transfer the Russian economy to an innovative development path by 2020, characterized by the following main indicators:
the share of industrial production enterprises carrying out technological innovations will increase to 40-50% in 2020 (in 2009 - 9.4%);
Russia's share in the world markets of high-tech goods and services (including nuclear energy, aircraft, space technology and services, special shipbuilding, etc.) will reach at least 5-10% in 5-7 or more sectors by 2020;
the share of exports of Russian high-tech goods in the total global volume of exports of high-tech goods will increase to 2% in 2020 (in 2008 - 0.35%);
the gross added value of the innovation sector in the gross domestic product will be 17-18% in 2020 (in 2009 - 12.7%);
the share of innovative products in the total volume of industrial products will increase to 25-35% in 2020 (in 2010 - 4.9%);
domestic spending on research and development will increase to 2.5-3% of gross domestic product in 2020 (in 2009 - 1.24%), of which more than half will come from the private sector;
the share of Russian researchers in the global number of publications in scientific journals will increase to 3% in 2020 (in 2010 - 2.13%);
the number of citations per publication of Russian researchers in scientific journals indexed in WEB of Science will increase to 2.1 links in 2020 (in 2006 - 1.51 links per article);
at least 4 Russian universities will be among the 200 leading world universities according to the QS World University Rankings (1 in 2010);
the number of patents registered annually by Russian individuals and legal entities in the patent offices of the EU, USA and Japan will exceed 2.5-3 thousand in 2020 (63 in 2009);
The share of funds received through research and development in the structure of funds received by leading Russian universities from all sources will reach 25%.
Overall economic growth and the pace of innovative development will be increasingly interconnected. On the one hand, innovative development will become the main source of economic growth through increasing the productivity of all factors of production in all sectors of the economy, expanding markets and increasing the competitiveness of products, through the creation of new industries, increasing investment activity, growing household incomes and consumption volumes, etc.
It is estimated that innovative development will provide an additional 0.8 percentage points of annual economic growth above the “inertial” development scenario, starting in 2015. On the other hand, economic growth will expand opportunities for the emergence of new products and technologies, will allow the state to increase investments in human capital (primarily in education and basic science), in support of innovation, which will have a multiplying effect on the pace of innovative development.
The main objectives of the innovation strategy are:
development of human resources in the field of science, education, technology and innovation;
increasing innovative business activity and accelerating the emergence of new innovative companies;
the widest possible introduction of modern innovative technologies into the activities of government bodies;
formation of a balanced and sustainably developing research and development sector;
ensuring the openness of the national innovation system and economy, as well as Russia’s integration into the global processes of creating and using innovations;
intensification of activities to implement innovation policy carried out by government bodies of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and municipalities.
Solving the problem of developing human resources in the field of science, education, technology and innovation includes the implementation of the following activities:
creation of effective material and moral incentives for the influx of the most qualified specialists, active entrepreneurs, creative youth into the sectors of the economy that determine its innovative development, as well as into education and science that ensure this development;
increasing the population's sensitivity to innovation - innovative products and technologies;
increasing the number of innovative entrepreneurs;
creating an atmosphere of risk tolerance in society;
promotion of innovative entrepreneurship and scientific and technical activities;
adaptation of the education system in order to form in the population, from childhood, the knowledge, competencies, skills and behavior patterns necessary for an innovative society and innovative economy, as well as the formation of a system of continuous education.
An innovative model of business behavior should become dominant in the development of companies in order to increase efficiency and take leadership positions in markets, as well as in the technological modernization of key sectors of the economy that determine the role and place of Russia in the global economy, and in increasing labor productivity in all sectors.
The widest possible introduction of modern innovative technologies into the activities of government bodies will ensure, among other things, the formation of e-government, the transfer to electronic form of most services to the population and the expansion of the use of the state order system to stimulate innovation. The state must ensure the formation of a favorable innovation climate, including the creation of conditions and incentives for innovation, as well as favorable conditions to use innovations in all activities.
The formation of a balanced and sustainably developing research and development sector, with an optimal institutional structure, will ensure expanded reproduction of knowledge, as well as increased efficiency and effectiveness of the infrastructure that ensures the commercialization of scientific research results.
Ensuring the openness of the national innovation system and economy, as well as Russia’s integration into the global processes of creating and using innovations, will make it possible to intensify international bilateral and multilateral scientific and technical cooperation.
Intensification of activities to implement innovation policy carried out by government bodies of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and municipalities will, among other things, ensure the formation of territories for innovative development and the development of innovation clusters.
The implementation of the Strategy is based on the following principles:
identifying problems and ways to solve them using a set of innovative tools in areas characterized by insufficient entrepreneurial activity;
close interaction between the state, business and science both in determining priority areas of technological development and in the process of their implementation;
creating incentives and conditions for technological modernization based on increasing the efficiency of companies using a set of measures of tariff, customs, tax and antimonopoly regulation;
ensuring investment and personnel attractiveness of innovative activity;
transparency of spending funds to support innovation activities;
orientation to international standards when assessing the effectiveness of scientific and educational organizations, innovative business and innovation infrastructure;
stimulating competition as a key motivation for innovative behavior (including in the research and development sector);
coordination and interconnection of budgetary, tax, foreign economic and other areas of socio-economic policy as a necessary condition for solving key problems of innovative development.
In this work, we examined the concept and tasks of innovation infrastructure, elements of the innovation infrastructure of the Russian Federation, the essence and principles, classification of scientific organizations, characteristics and types of small innovative enterprises (companies), and also identified the goals and objectives of the innovation strategy of the Russian Federation until 2020. As a result, Currently, the key problem is the generally low demand for innovation in the Russian economy, as well as its ineffective structure - an excessive bias towards the purchase of finished equipment abroad to the detriment of the introduction of its own new developments. These trends determine the need to adjust the policies implemented to date in the field of innovation. The strategy, based on the positive results achieved as a result of innovation policy in previous years, corrects its most significant shortcomings, and also takes into account new directions of innovation support policy formed in recent years.
Task No. 2
Underline the correct answer.
1. Royalty is:
a) payments in the form of interest;
b) cost-reimbursable prices;
c) prices with guaranteed maximum payments;
d) fixed price.
2. Innovation marketing is a process that includes:
a) price planning;
b) market research;
c) sales planning;
d) all together.
2.3. Obtaining an economic effect from investing in a new product is a task:
a) engineering;
b) reengineering;
c) brand strategy;
d) benchmarking.
2.4. The purpose of innovation management in an enterprise is
a) determination of the main directions of scientific activity of the enterprise;
b) determination of the main directions of economic activity of the enterprise;
c) determination of the main directions of the enterprise’s production activities;
d) all answers are correct.
Task No. 3
List the sources of financing for innovation activities. Financing innovation activity is the direction and use of funds for the design, development and organization of production of new types of products, services, for the creation and implementation of new equipment, technology, development and implementation of new organizational forms and management methods. Sources of financing the innovative activities of organizations can be divided into the following groups (Table 1).
Table 1. Sources of financing the innovative activities of organizations.
List of used literature
1. http://dic.academic.ru/
http://economy.gov.ru/
N.R. Kovalev, V.A. Pirozhkov “Innovation Management”, Ekaterinburg 2006
V.V. Zharikov I.A. Zharikov V.G. Odnolko A.I. Evseychev. Innovation process management: tutorial. - Tambov: Tamb Publishing House. state tech. Un-ta. -180 pp., 2009
Innovative management: educational and methodological complex/ S.P. Barabenko, M.N. Dudin, N.V. Lyasnikov. - M.: ZAO Tsentropoligraf, 2010. - 287 p. - (Higher education)
Http://studopedia.ru/
http://bzbook.ru/
Innovative management: Textbook for universities / S.D. Ilyenkova, L.M. Gokhberg, S.Yu. Yagudin and others; edited by Prof. S. Ilyenkova. - 2nd edition, revised and expanded M.: UNITY-DANA, 2003 -343 p.
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Innovation infrastructure is a set of elements that perform the functions of servicing and facilitating innovation processes. In other words, innovation infrastructure is all information, organizational, marketing, educational and other networks that ensure the practical implementation of new technology
The purpose of innovation infrastructure- ensuring acceleration of the transfer of knowledge and technology.
Challenges of innovation infrastructure:
Information Support;
Production and technological support for innovative activities;
Tasks of certification and standardization of innovative products;
Promoting effective development and implementation of innovative projects;
Holding exhibitions of innovative projects and products;
Providing consulting assistance;
Training, retraining and advanced training of personnel for innovative activities.
The innovation infrastructure includes organizations, firms, and associations that cover the entire cycle of innovation activities from the generation of new scientific and technical ideas and their processing to the production and sale of high-tech products.
Innovation infrastructure- is a set of interconnected and complementary organizations or their divisions that carry out innovative activities and contribute to it. Such organizations include:
1) innovation incubator- a complex multidisciplinary complex, usually occupying a separate building and implementing a wide range of innovative and information services. The incubator provides services to third-party firms for 2-5 years, after which these firms leave the incubator and begin independent activities. Innovation incubators were the basis and core of future technology parks and technopolises.
2) technology park is a research and production territorial complex, which includes a number of centers: research, innovation, marketing, training center and information technology center. The functioning of the technology park is based on the commercialization of scientific and technical activities and accelerating the promotion of innovations in the sphere of material production;
3) technopolis– is an integral research and production structure created on the basis of a separate city, in the economy of which technology parks and incubators play a significant role. It is a conglomerate consisting of several hundred research institutions, industrial firms, innovation, venture and other organizations. The center of a technopolis, its core link, is usually a large university - a generator and carrier of fundamental science.
In general, innovation infrastructure is an organizational, material, financial, credit, information and service base for creating conditions conducive to the accumulation and distribution of funds, as well as the provision of a wide range of specialized services for the development of innovation, technology transfer and commercialization of scientific and technical products in increased risk.
In Belarus, the functions of existing technology parks are mainly limited to supporting small enterprises that have already launched the production of their products. This is their difference from their foreign analogues.
In the Republic of Belarus, innovation infrastructure is developing as the most important segment of the modern National Innovation System.
In order to increase the efficiency of using human resources, material and financial resources in scientific and innovative activities, scientific and practical (technical) centers have been created in the Republic of Belarus. Thus, in the system of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus there are 5 of them (agrarian profile), in the Ministry of Industry - 8.
There are 22 centers for the collective use of unique scientific equipment and instruments (hereinafter referred to as the Center for Shared Use of Unique Scientific Equipment and Instruments) in the republic, including 12 in the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 8 in the Ministry of Education, and one each in the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Health. The experience of the Center for Use shows that at present they are becoming the most effective organizational and legal form of rational use of existing and acquired unique expensive scientific equipment.
Institutes of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Belarus have created 40 operating small innovative enterprises. In the technology park of CJSC “Scientific and Technological Park” at BSU there are more than 20 enterprises whose area of activity is the production and release of knowledge-intensive high-tech products.
The Republic of Belarus operates a High Technology Park, the main purpose of which is to ensure the development and implementation of modern technologies in industrial and other organizations, to promote the creation and development of industries based on new and high technologies, and to increase the competitiveness of sectors of the economy of the Republic of Belarus.
At the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, the Innovation Association “Akademtechnopark”, a non-profit association of design, production and innovative enterprises formed in 2002, has shown its resilience and efficiency. The main goals of the established association are a comprehensive solution to the problems of accelerated transfer of scientific research results into production and assistance in bringing them to consumers on a commercial basis. The structure of the innovation association “Academtechnopark” includes the Republican Center for Technology Transfer (RTTC), which was created in May 2003 within the framework of the UNDP Project “Improving the infrastructure to support innovation activities in the Republic of Belarus” with the participation of the State Committee for Science and Technology, the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus and UNIDO. The main objectives of the RCTT innovation infrastructure are to assist subjects of innovation in the development and promotion of innovative and investment projects, create and maintain information databases, provide RCTT clients with access to international databases of scientific and technical information and technology transfer, training personnel in the field of scientific and innovative entrepreneurship.
RCTT provides services in the field of technology transfer to more than 30 government organizations, small and medium-sized private enterprises, and individuals, including the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, BSU, BNTU. With the support of RCTT, more than 300 Belarusian specialists were trained in various areas innovation activities at national and international seminars, conferences and exhibitions in Austria, Germany, India, China, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Czech Republic. With the support of RCTT, in November 2003, a meeting of the UNIDO expert group in the field of nanotechnology was held in Minsk, in which specialists from many countries of the world took part. The areas and experience of applying nanotechnology in industrialized and developing countries, the UNIDO/IMAAC network planning program in the technological field were reviewed, a draft international cooperation program was discussed, possible sources of funding were identified, and the issue of creating a specialized center for nanoenergy in the city with the support of UNIDO was considered. Minsk. RCTT has signed 11 agreements on interaction in the field of technology transfer with organizations from the UK, Germany, China, South Korea, Poland, and Russia.
In many cases, university-industry collaborations take place within the framework of “science parks.”
The first such park appeared in the USA in 1949 at Stanford University (California). The idea was simple: lease a piece of university land to existing companies to house their research and development units, which would combine with a set of conditions to promote research and development in areas of advanced technology from university laboratories and research groups.
The solution to the problems of the transition period is largely determined by the innovation sphere, which initiates the progressive development of scientific and technological progress and actively participates in the formation of the country's national wealth.
This is a special area of the social division of labor, ensuring the implementation of the product of the scientific sphere in material production, and at the same time a special production phase of social production. A condition for the functioning of the innovation sphere is intellectual property and ownership of the product of innovation activity. In the innovation sphere, a separate specialized material and technical base is being formed, special moves and methods corresponding to the forms of organization and management of innovation activities.
The innovation sphere is a set of sectors of the national economy, types of social activities that do not directly participate in the creation of material goods, but produce use values of a special kind, often without material substance, but necessary for the functioning and development of material production.
The functional purpose of the innovation sphere in the system of social division of labor is associated with the performance of its functions in creating
Denmark and meeting the needs for innovation both in material production and in society as a whole.
The main part of the consumer value products of the innovation sphere has a commodity form, its movement is carried out through exchange.
The innovation sphere covers R&D, marketing, and business structures whose activities are aimed at meeting the innovation needs of material production. At the same time, the innovation sphere does not include bodies of education, management, financing, insurance, and accounting.
The innovation sphere is involved in the creation and redistribution of national income in national economy and ensures the transfer of property and scientific product from the sphere of science to the sphere of material production.
In the innovation sphere, disparate processes are combined into a single innovation process that creates innovations that meet the demand of the production sector and provides conditions for their development by the enterprise and consumers.
In general, economic relations in the innovation sphere are derived from the relations of material production, but at the same time they have their own specificity.
In contrast to the scientific sphere, exchange transactions predominate in the innovation sphere; property rights are clearly defined when they are carried out between entities carrying out innovative activities and entities external to this sphere. Management in the innovation sphere is based on the criterion of economic efficiency, and the transfer of an innovative product to the production sector involves the implementation of marketing research.
The development of the innovation sphere makes it possible to reduce the time it takes to master the production of scientific products, to quickly return the advanced capital and again direct it to expanded reproduction.
The innovation sphere is characterized by a special form of financial activity, venture lending and marketing focus on promoting scientific products to the market.
So, the innovation sphere is part of the system of industrial relations that arise regarding the production, distribution, exchange and consumption of innovations and are based on the integration of participation in innovation activities of business structures and the state in a market economy. The innovation sphere appears as a special subsystem of social reproduction, the movement of capital invested in a specific form of its concentration and functioning (risk, venture), a special institutional unity, including a set of state regulation and structure-forming elements. Currently, an urgent problem is the creation of conditions for its reproduction, including credit and financial ones, which involves the development of a certain sector of the economy, classified as “infrastructure”.
Infrastructure is an independent sector of the economy. A special feature of infrastructure industries is that they produce services rather than material products. The transition to a market economic system in Russia is associated with the emergence of a large number of independent producers, so the task of infrastructure elements is to create and maintain stable economic ties between economic entities. Consequently, the main function of infrastructure is the formation of external economic conditions for both economic entities and the national economy as a whole.
In connection with the development of market relations in Russia, the task of forming a market infrastructure adequate to the new economic mechanism is being solved, which, being the most important component of the economic mechanism itself, would contribute to the free exchange of economic resources and the implementation of the function of self-regulation and self-adjustment of the national economy in connection with market fluctuations.
In domestic economic literature, the concept of “market infrastructure” characterizes the fact that in the Russian economy, which is an economic system mixed type, for a long time there will be non-market organizational structures and economic forms operating in accordance with administrative and bureaucratic principles of management and related to the “non-market infrastructure”.
Since in foreign countries the market means the economic system as a whole, the concept of “infrastructure” is used in Western economic literature.
By infrastructure of innovation activity, or innovation infrastructure, we understand a complex of organizational and economic institutions that directly ensure the conditions for the existence of innovative processes by economic entities (including specialized innovative organizations) based on the principles of economic efficiency of both the national economy as a whole and its economic entities in market conditions market fluctuations. All organizations related to the innovation infrastructure are in a certain technological and economic connection, expressing the unity of the stages of innovation activity. The organizations that collectively form its infrastructure vary by sector, type, and territory, including foreign organizations and enterprises. At present, a new structure of organizations in the innovation sphere and an innovation infrastructure are being formed in the Russian Federation, the function of which is to implement the conditions for the reproduction of innovation activity.
Market infrastructure institutions that assist innovative organizations at the micro level in Russia include investment and innovation funds, banks, business incubators, economic associations, financial groups associated with scientific and technical innovations, etc. At the macro level, Russian business support funds operate . These funds are essentially venture capital in nature; they practice a competitive approach to project implementation.
Innovation infrastructure is characterized by a global trend of “servization of the economy,” that is, an accelerated pace of development compared to the pace of development of innovative organizations due to the fact that innovation infrastructure is becoming the most important resource for innovation processes in the national economy. At the same time, the accelerated development of infrastructure institutions is facilitated by the high multiplier effect of increasing demand for their services, the low sensitivity of infrastructure to cyclical fluctuations in material production and the expansion of demand for the services of innovation infrastructure institutions during the period of recovery from depression.
An effectively operating infrastructure of the innovation sphere is the most important factor ensuring the adaptation of the economy to the assimilation of progressive technology and its production, based on a diverse, complex and long-term interaction between the innovation sphere and the market, which, through the mechanism of competition, largely determines the intensity of innovation processes.
Under the conditions of the administrative-command management system, decisions on the introduction of innovations into production remained under the jurisdiction of administrative bureaucratic bodies and were not related to international efficiency parameters. The destruction of the state-monopolized and politicized system for introducing the achievements of scientific and technological progress was aggravated by problems associated with market reform of the economy and the crisis state of production and social spheres, which actually led to the curtailment of innovation activity in the country. Thus, since 1991, the share of enterprises developing new products has not exceeded 7%, which in turn has significantly reduced the demand for scientific and technical innovations and new technologies. At the same time, intensifying innovation activity is impossible without an innovation market and accompanying infrastructure.
The process of forming an innovation infrastructure during the transition period from one economic system to another began quite spontaneously, without the necessary government regulation. Often, individual elements of innovation infrastructure appeared before innovation activities began to develop. For further development innovation infrastructure in Russia, the accelerated and large-scale implementation of innovative processes in the real sector of the economy is becoming important, which in turn is associated with overcoming the economic recession and implementing intensive structural changes in the national economy.
Due to the fact that in parallel there are both state institutions of innovation infrastructure and non-state ones, the legislative and economic mechanism of their interaction and complementarity must be determined. To establish equal operating conditions, instruments of the tax mechanism and financial and credit levers can be used.
The infrastructure of innovation activity is divided into the following functional areas: transport and communications; computer science and telecommunications; credit and financial sector; stock market; Institute of Intermediaries; companies and firms providing special services.
The credit and financial sphere of the infrastructure of innovation activity has specific features associated with the nature of this activity, which differs high degree commercial risk, the need to attract long-term investments, etc.
The main function of banks in the innovation sphere is financing and lending to the processes of creating and replicating scientific and technical innovations. Banks can provide lending at all stages of the innovation life cycle. Typically, a loan is issued against the funds available to the applicant, under guarantees from his superior organization, under concluded agreements for the purchase of new products produced using the loan. At the same time, the interest rate for a loan for innovative activities is set depending on its effectiveness, payback periods, compliance with the priorities of scientific and technical development and the degree of risk of the activities being financed.
The bank can become a co-owner of the result, compensating for its costs in the form of profits from the operation of the innovation, and the financing agreement may stipulate a period after which the bank’s share of funds in financing the innovation will, at the request of the legal entity that received the loan, be purchased by it.
Through leasing operations, a bank can become the owner of an innovative enterprise or create a new production facility. A reconstructed enterprise, the owner or co-owner of which is a bank, in turn, can be leased, and the tenant will pay a specified amount, which goes to compensate the bank’s expenses. An agreement with a tenant may provide for conditions under which the bank, for a certain fee, can cede all or part of its rights to own the enterprise.
Banks can organize a comprehensive examination of an innovation from scientific, technical, economic, economic and other aspects, attracting highly qualified specialists for this. Typically, the cost of due diligence is one percent of the estimated cost or contract price of the development. In addition, the bank can provide various services to innovative enterprises: information, intermediary, advisory, scientific and technical, advertising, forecasting, and market research.
Finally, the bank can become the organizer of joint ventures created on a joint-stock basis.
The risky nature of the activities of innovative enterprises prevents the widespread involvement of commercial banks in the process of lending to innovative projects, which is associated not only with the long-term nature of the requested loans, but also often with the lack of guarantees for the lender to repay loans and receive dividends. This circumstance removes commercial banks from the number of investors in innovative enterprises for long-term projects. In addition, there are no methodological approaches to lending to innovative enterprises that take into account risk factors.
In our opinion, the repayment of a loan from a commercial bank to an innovative enterprise should be based on a differentiated approach to the interest rate, the level of which should be determined in direct dependence on the effectiveness of innovative projects and the main performance indicators of innovative enterprises, since the criterion of the discounted value of the project in conditions of limiting the growth rate of inflation and strengthening of the national currency will have less and less impact on the interest rate.
Factors that should be taken into account when determining the interest rate include the following:
Profit received from the implementation of an innovative project;
The amount of costs determined at the stage of development work based on functional cost analysis;
The share of borrowed funds from an investment fund or bank in the total volume of cost recovery;
The implementation period of the innovation project, which determines the timing of the immobilization of loan funds for the implementation of the project and their return to the lender.
Considering the risky nature of innovative projects and the uncertainty of their final result, it should be expected that the planned values of these factors may not coincide with their actual values. The ratio of actual and planned values of factors should lead to a change in the amount of funds for paying interest on the loan, which will target borrowers to achieve the best results when using the loan.
The deviation of actual indicators from planned ones during the implementation of an innovative project is characterized by an indicator of economic risk (risk coefficient).
Positive results of the implementation of an innovative project are characterized by positive values of the risk coefficient, which should be accompanied by a decrease in funds allocated to pay off the loan, i.e., a decrease in the interest rate. If the risk coefficient is zero, the innovative entrepreneur pays the loan at the standard interest rate. If the risk coefficient is negative, he will have to increase the amount of payment for the loan due to an increase in the interest rate compared to its planned value.
When establishing a connection between the scales of risk coefficients and the value of the interest rate, it should be taken into account that a sharp excess of the numerical value of the upper limit of the interest rate above the rate of profitability of borrowers will extremely reduce the demand for loans, while its small value will not have a stimulating effect on their effective use. The lower limit of the interest rate should cover the current costs of lenders, ensure the profitability of their work and interest in expanding the circle of borrowers.
The establishment by commercial banks of interest rates for loans that take into account the risky nature of innovative projects allows them not only to preserve, but also to increase their assets, making a significant contribution to the stability of the economy. The intermediary role of commercial banks, providing connections between developers and entrepreneurs, also seems promising.
Since the development and release of new products require significant investments, the option allows the company to receive an interest-free loan, while the buyer-broker makes a partial prepayment.
The contract stipulates that if the enterprise refuses to supply, the interest-free loan turns into a commercial loan with a rate no lower than for commercial bank loans.
The methodology for trading non-productive products of an enterprise, developed by specialists of the Tyumen-Moscow Exchange (TMB), provides that the enterprise can put up for auction in the options section a product that has not yet been produced, and the buyer, having paid from 20 to 40% of the cost of the entire batch, receives the right to distribute it as production proceeds. Payment of the remaining 60-80% of the cost is carried out upon delivery.
The conditions for reducing current prices are negotiated, or the redistribution of income from the sale of products between the manufacturer and the buyer is provided in the event of a rise in prices.
The development of innovative entrepreneurship in Russia is possible through the formation of an infrastructure of securities institutions (investment banks and funds, insurance companies), which are designed to ensure the free movement of shares.
The formation of a system of venture financing of innovative enterprises based on venture funds in Russia is becoming an urgent need. Although such funds, actively operating in the field of innovative entrepreneurship in countries with market economies, have existed for a number of decades, for our country they are a new phenomenon in the financial infrastructure.
The most appropriate form of innovative entrepreneurial activity in countries with market economies has become “risk business,” which organically combines two types of entrepreneurship: financial and innovative, which distinguishes two types of economic entities in risk business: venture capital companies and financed or small innovative firms. In a market economy, risky business performs an important function of stimulating competition.
Venture capital is intended for long-term and potentially highly profitable risk investments based on the creation of new innovative companies, the development and renewal of existing firms, as well as to finance the privatization of state property.
Venture investments finance entrepreneurial projects that, due to their high risk, do not receive financial support from traditional sources, and property and other assets of risky enterprises cannot act as a guarantee to secure a bank loan. The most important role is the role of venture capital for the dissemination of scientific and technological innovations.
Risk capital financing innovative projects of private firms is characterized by a number of features that distinguish it from banking and industrial capital. Risk capital operates under “approved risk” conditions, with capital investors taking into account in advance the possibility of losing their funds if the financed firm fails, counting on a high rate of return if it succeeds. Risk capital is intended for long-term investment, and the capitalist usually has to wait on average 3-5 years to be convinced of the prospects of a new idea, and from 5 to 10 years to begin to receive a profit on the invested capital.
Risk capital is usually placed not in the form of loans, but in the form of a share contribution in the authorized capital of a small company, with capital investors acting as partners with limited liability (in terms of the size of the contribution). Depending on the share of their participation, which is agreed upon when providing money, risk capitalists receive the right to receive future profits of the financed company. The main incentive for investing risk capital is the desire to receive not entrepreneurial, but founder's income, growing the ward company to such a stage when it becomes profitable to sell it to a large corporation, or issue and sell its shares on the stock exchange. The excess of the market value of their shares over the invested capital represents the main object of interest of risk capitalists, their founder's profit.
The high riskiness of projects and the status of co-owners of the company being founded determine the personal interest of capitalists in the success of the new enterprise. Therefore, risk capitalists, not limiting themselves to providing funds, provide management, advisory and other business services without interfering in the management of the company's activities.
Investing in companies with unique, unparalleled technology turns out to be a risky venture that brings high results. Typically, in the early stages of financing, venture capitalists aim to achieve a profit of 10 times the initial investment over a 5-7 year period.
The birthplace of risk (venture) financing is the United States, where the first venture funds arose after the Second World War. In the United States, three main organizational forms of risk capital have emerged: small business investment companies under the tutelage of the federal government; specialized private venture capital companies; specialized risk branches of large corporations (including for intra-corporate risk financing).
Specialized venture capital companies manage several funds of money specialized in supporting small innovative firms either in a specific industry or territory.
According to their legal status, both the risk capital companies themselves and the cash income they have in their operational management, generated from the funds of pension funds, insurance companies and banks, corporations and the population, are limited liability partnerships or (less often) closed corporations. This legal status is of particular importance not only because of preferential taxation, but also because individual investors are not able to withdraw their funds from them before a certain date or without the consent of other members of the pool, which ensures a longer payback period for investments, since the increased risk of investments Innovative firms require stable long-term policies and a solid financial base.
Many risk capital companies often use the practice of “distributed risk”, not investing in the project of a single small innovative company, but distributing them among several projects of different companies, which insures the failure of some projects by the success of others. As a result, innovative firms receive funds from several companies, and the investors themselves have a share of participation - the acquisition is in accordance with their contribution.
Using venture capital to enter into buyout deals allows you to maintain a low level of debt capital during the first stage of a company's formation. At the same time, the assets of the acquired company are used as collateral to obtain new short-term loans, although the growth in buyout transactions does not create the basis for long-term development of the companies and is predominantly speculative. Negative perceptions of these types of deals are associated with the diversion of large sums of venture capital at a time when high-tech and innovative companies lack funds for research and development.
In the field of risk capital, there are also individual independent individuals (so-called “angels”) who provide support for risky projects of small innovative firms.
Corporations invest in small innovative firms through special branches - investment venture firms, or create dozens of investment firms that form an extensive network for capturing and using technical ideas.
An increasingly growing source of venture capital are small business investment companies, as they are entitled to government guarantees for their investments. Small business investment companies are completely independent in their activities and allocate funds not in the form of risk capital, but in the form of long-term loans, which allows them to be classified as traditional financial institutions.
Modern forms of management, reflecting the trend of consolidation of organizational forms of venture entrepreneurship, are “venture capital clubs”, which are associations of various risk capital firms, financiers, large corporations and individual investors. These clubs provide support to venture enterprises that have arisen in a certain sector of the economy or a specific region, including financial ones.
In all developed countries, the determining role in the formation of a venture financing system is played by the state, which implements targeted policies in the field of taxes, information support, infrastructure creation, and in the legal field, therefore it should be stated that the formation in Russia of a system of venture financing of innovative enterprises based on venture funds.
State innovation policy involves legal regulation of the activities of venture funds and ensuring preferential taxation of all or part of the profits of its investors directed to these funds.
In addition to tax benefits for innovative loans, a set of regulations should provide for the possibility of expanded reproduction of the fund’s financial resources through deductions from profits received from the implementation of innovative projects, benefits in the formation of credit resources as working capital of the fund, benefits for participants in innovative projects in terms of customs duties and duties, obtaining general licenses and expanding powers for barter transactions.
In our opinion, the funds of a venture fund should be of a mixed nature and be formed, in addition to shareholder contributions, from income from the scientific, technical and production activities of the fund, income from the profits of enterprises that have introduced innovations financed by the fund, income from participation in joint ventures, voluntary contributions from ministries , departments, banks, enterprises, individual citizens, foreign and international organizations and firms.
It seems a promising approach in which the state allocates a certain amount of funds from the budget to the innovation fund as a contribution to the authorized capital, and the fund itself subsequently functions through deductions from the profits of enterprises implementing innovative projects financed by the fund, as well as part of the taxes and revenues of these enterprises and other interested investors.
The founders of venture funds can be commercial banks, international financial structures (International Finance Corporation, etc.), Russian Academy sciences and its institutions, innovative enterprises created at institutions of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and other legal entities and individuals.
The main goal of the venture fund will be to ensure the return on investment of the founders as a result of their investment in the commercial implementation of scientific research and development carried out in the Russian Federation, as well as in other countries, through the creation of competitive innovative enterprises and the formation of new knowledge-intensive industries in the republic.
The main activities of a venture fund may be the following:
Financing of preliminary research and development, assessment of the potential market for innovations, development business plans future companies, patenting inventions, acquiring rights to patents and licenses;
Creation of innovative enterprises that carry out the production development of innovations, financing the expansion of the activities of such enterprises and increasing their sales of products and services;
Activities to ensure liquidity of shares of innovative enterprises, sale of their shares on the secondary securities market.
To carry out these types of activities, venture funds will analyze the securities market, develop a strategy for entering the stock market, advise developers and entrepreneurs, conduct an examination of their innovative projects, provide innovative enterprises created by the fund with a wide range of services related to the selection of counterparties, intermediaries, with the involvement personnel, implementation of information support, etc.
The Fund can develop and implement strategies for the activities of innovative enterprises created by it in the field of dividend policy, carrying out recapitalization programs, rapid expansion of capital, etc.
The profit of a venture fund should be generated from dividends and proceeds on securities created by the fund of joint-stock enterprises, as well as from income from transactions with these securities on the secondary securities market. The fund's profits, used to pay dividends, must be distributed among its shareholders in proportion to the number of shares they own.
Recipients of funds can be both individual organizations and teams and individual scientists, inventors and specialists proposing risk-related projects. It seems to us that the creation of such funds is advisable in each region.
To stimulate the development of priority areas of activity of innovative enterprises, venture funds can issue loans to risky enterprises within the framework of regional programs for supporting private entrepreneurship and small businesses, and guarantees to insurance institutions for loans allocated to such enterprises and for insurance premiums for insuring commercial risks.
When forming venture funds, it is necessary to provide not only for the purely administrative nature of control over their activities, but also for control by enterprises that are consumers of innovative work financed by the fund. It would be necessary to provide for the possibility of converting part of the fund’s funds into securities, directing part of the funds to lending to innovative projects with the contractual establishment of conditions for repaying the loan with the payment of an agreed percentage and, finally, the right to a certain part of the profit (“royalty” of the fund) in the case of high profitability of innovative projects . This proposal ensures the establishment of feedback between the effectiveness of the fund and the amount of funds spent on its formation.
The creation of a venture capital market based on the activities of venture funds will help overcome the weak interest of commercial banks and the main consumers of scientific and technical products in innovative projects due to high inflation and the unstable state of producing structures, and will focus on working with innovative enterprises that carry out commercial implementation of scientific research. -technical innovations.
Innovation funds play a critical role in the functioning of the financial and credit sector in our country. The main functions of regional innovation funds include financial, material and information support for initiative inventive and innovative projects.
Despite the insignificant volume of activity and the imperfection of formation methods, the scope of innovation activity is being expanded by such specialized innovation funds as the Fund for the Promotion of Inventive and Innovative Activities, the Federal Invention Fund, International Fund development of entrepreneurship, etc. Investment companies are developing, introducing new technologies and Information Systems in mechanical engineering. There is an association of projects “Sovnet”, uniting a number of organizations and specialists, associations of technology parks, science cities, scientific and technical cooperation, etc. It should be noted the organizational diversity of market infrastructure institutions serving innovative activities, by types and levels of functions of infrastructure facilities. Difficulties in their functioning are associated primarily with the absence in the economic sphere of production of a market need for the use of innovations, on the one hand, and with the fact that in the banking sector a specialization of banks in the field of venture capital has not been formed, capable of ensuring the implementation of competitive technologies, on the other.
The problem considered allows us to state that its significance for the development of the national economy and its high capital intensity require direct participation of the state in resolving it.
G.V.Shepelevdeputy Head of the Department of Innovative Development and Infrastructure of Rosnauka
Introduction
It now seems quite obvious that increasing competitiveness Russian industry is possible only through the development of innovative activities. One of the main directions of development and stimulation of innovation activity is the creation of innovation infrastructure. In the Fundamentals of the Policy of the Russian Federation in the field of development of science and technology for the period until 2010 and beyond, the construction of an innovation infrastructure is named among the main tasks of forming a national innovation system.
This article examines the state of the infrastructure of the innovation system in Russia and provides an analysis of a number of problems that hinder the development of innovative approaches in industry, as well as some possible measures to create favorable conditions for the development of innovative activities of Russian enterprises.
The first elements of innovation infrastructure - science and technology parks and business incubators - were created in Russia on the basis of higher educational institutions in the early 90s in Tomsk (1990), Moscow and Zelenograd (1991). In the mid-90s, technology parks appeared, organized on the basis of large state scientific centers (SSC). The next step was the emergence of regional technology parks created to develop the production of high-tech products. Such technology parks had their own premises, financial support from federal and regional authorities, and quite successfully developed small innovative firms within their walls.
In the late 90s - early 2000s, with the participation of the Russian Ministry of Industry and Science, a network of innovation and technology centers (ITCs) was created, which, in terms of the tasks they solve, largely overlap with technology parks. The main feature of the ITC is that it is a support structure for established small innovative enterprises that have already passed the most difficult stage of creation. Therefore, unlike technology parks, which were to be created at universities and carry out the task of incubating small firms, ITCs were designed to ensure more stable connections between small businesses and industry, and therefore had to be created at enterprises or research and production complexes. The dynamics of the number of ITCs by year is shown in Fig. 1. 1
1 Analysis of the practice of existing innovation infrastructure facilities and development of mechanisms for their adaptation to support (incubate) small innovative companies created with the participation of technology transfer centers. Research report. Union of Innovation and Technology Centers of Russia. M.: 2004.
Fig.1. Dynamics of the number of innovation and technology centers
Since 2003, a network of technology transfer centers (TTCs) has been developing, whose task is to accelerate the commercialization of scientific and technical results, ensuring the creation of small innovative enterprises, including as part of technology parks and innovation and technology centers.
Currently, there are more than 100 organizations operating in the regions of Russia that perform the functions of technology parks. Their distribution by region is shown in Fig. 2.
Geography of innovation support facilities
- Technoparks
- Innovation and technology centers
- Technology transfer centers
| District | Technoparks and innovative and technological centers |
Centers technology transfer |
| Central district | 36 | 19 |
| Northwestern District | 18 | 6 |
| Southern District | 12 | 4 |
| Privolzhsky district | 19 | 5 |
| Ural district | 3 | 3 |
| Siberian district | 12 | 9 |
| Far Eastern District | 5 | 2 |
| Total | 105 | 48 |
In addition to the mentioned elements, enterprises for information support of innovative activities, personnel training, financing, etc. have been created and are functioning.
Although a fairly extensive network of infrastructure enterprises has now been created, the results of the development of innovative activities leave much to be desired. Russia's share in the markets for high-tech products is a vanishingly small value of 0.3...0.5%, which is tens and hundreds of times less than the share of developed countries. At the same time, there is a reduction in the number of small innovative enterprises (Fig. 3), and the number of scientific employees is decreasing (Fig. 4). 2
2
Fig.3. Dynamics of enterprises in the “Science and scientific services” industry
Fig.4. Dynamics of the research sector population
To understand the reasons for the current situation and the problems facing the innovation sector, it is necessary to consider the place of infrastructure in the national innovation system (NIS) and the role it plays.
System of connections of NIS elements
Let's consider what components are included in the NIS and how its individual parts interact. There are quite a few definitions of NIS. 3 For our purposes, the simplest and most intuitive definition of NIS is sufficient as a system that transforms knowledge into new technologies, products and services that are consumed in national or global markets.
3 Dezhina I.G., Saltykov B.G. Improving the economic mechanisms of state regulation of the commercialization of the results of scientific research and development. IET, M.: 2004
The determining role in the functioning of the NIS is played by the state, which determines the rules for the functioning and interaction of participants in the innovation process through the formation of a regulatory environment. The NIS includes the actual subjects of innovation activity - organizations and individuals involved in the creation and promotion of an innovative product, and infrastructure objects - organizations that contribute to the implementation of innovation activity. The composition and communication system of the NIS are presented in Fig. 5.
Fig.5. Composition of the NIS and the system of links between innovation activities
As follows from the definition of NIS, the main result of its functioning is an increase in the volume of production of high-tech products. Achieving almost all the goals formulated in the latest Government materials (doubling GDP, increasing the standard of living of the population, etc.) ultimately comes down to how efficiently production will be organized. Therefore, the main goal of analyzing the functioning of the NIS and innovation infrastructure is to identify measures that stimulate the growth of sales volumes of high-tech products of Russian enterprises.
Resources of subjects of innovation activity
To do this, first consider the potential that enterprises carrying out innovative activities have. These enterprises, which we will further call subjects of innovation activity, include research institutes (industrial and academic), universities conducting scientific research, industrial enterprises (small and medium-sized) engaged in the development of new products and the production of small batches, large enterprises, which ideally should carry out large-scale production of innovative products. For completeness, mention should also be made of entrepreneurs and inventors engaged in private inventive and research activities.
The process of creating a new (innovative) product goes through several stages, starting from fundamental scientific research, through the promotion of an idea and the development of a product prototype (R&D) to serial production and sale to the consumer. This entire path, sometimes called the “innovation corridor,” is based on the use of a whole range of resources. In order to carry out their activities (conduct research or produce products), enterprises must have a set of resources, the main of which include:
- production premises, research base or production facilities,
- personnel with the necessary qualifications,
- scientific background, production technologies, etc.,
- finances for development or production,
- informational resources,
- sales networks ensuring the promotion of products to markets.
The effectiveness of innovation activity depends on the availability and condition of these resources, on the ability of enterprises to use them, so we will briefly characterize the listed resources from the point of view of the possible competitive advantages of Russian innovative enterprises. Detailed studies and statistical data are provided in the specialized literature, so what follows will mainly be a statement of the current situation without a detailed analysis.
The research base of research organizations is largely outdated. Renewal of the instrument fleet in most of them was interrupted for almost a decade. Individual purchases of modern scientific equipment cannot radically change the situation, so from this point of view it is hardly worth hoping for Russian enterprises to maintain leading positions on the entire front of scientific research.
The production capacities of industrial enterprises in the machine-building complex are also largely outdated. The machine park is aging and changing towards the use of simple universal machines. Enterprises make very few purchases of modern equipment capable of producing highly complex products. Thus, the production base of the scientific and technical complex can also hardly be considered a competitive advantage.
To ensure the production of modern products, it is necessary to provide enterprises with access to modern equipment and technologies. This problem is especially relevant for small and medium-sized enterprises, which, due to weak financial capabilities and small production volumes, cannot purchase modern equipment. At the same time, it is small innovative enterprises that are considered one of the main sources of innovation for industry.
The consequence of the current state of affairs in industry has become a situation where fundamental science creates a product that cannot be rationally used within the country by Russian enterprises. Instead, promising scientific and technical results are often transferred to industrialized countries, where their commercialization takes place. In cases where the results of work carried out at the expense of the state budget are transferred, in the current state of affairs, public funds are essentially sponsoring foreign countries, often without adequately covering the costs of our research sector. With the development of the global information infrastructure, when open information about the work carried out almost instantly becomes available to any interested party, the possibility of “informal” contacts with developers allows foreign companies to buy developments for a small part of their real cost.
We also note that, despite the existing resource limitations, our research continues in almost all areas that developed back in Soviet times. This leads to the fact that in most promising areas of research it is not possible to concentrate sufficient forces for a serious breakthrough.
A serious resource is the scientific reserve left over from old times. Unique technologies created in Soviet times still remain a resource that supports individual islands of high-tech business in Russian industry. A number of enterprises continue to produce small batches of devices that are successfully sold in the domestic and foreign markets. However, there are very few examples of large-scale use of old technologies. In addition, it should be noted that the technologies used by our enterprises become obsolete over time and their comparative effectiveness is gradually reduced due to the development of new directions and technologies created on a new scientific and technological basis, which is absent in Russian industry.
Another problem of enterprises producing such products recently is the aging of personnel who are carriers of these technologies. Without the entry of young workers, the technologies used may be partially lost. The average age of highly qualified scientific and design personnel at research enterprises is close to retirement age (see Table 1). Replenishing the human resources potential with young people does not cover losses due to the outflow of older generation specialists. A difficult situation develops with average technical personnel, who largely determine the effectiveness of the use of technology in industry. The high human resources potential, which has been our advantage over the past years, may gradually fade away without adequate replenishment by young employees.
Table 1
Average age of scientific personnel 4
| 1994 | 2002 | |
| Total | 45 | 48 |
| Doctors of Science | 58 | 60 |
| Candidates of Science | 49 | 53 |
4 Russian science in numbers. CISN, M.: 2003
Another serious problem of the knowledge-intensive sector of the economy is access to financial resources, which is limited for most industrial enterprises in the knowledge-intensive sector. Enterprises develop mainly through the use of their own funds. There is virtually no borrowing at the product development stage. Venture capital schemes are not currently working, and elementary analysis shows that in the near future they will not work on a significant scale for the economy due to the underdevelopment of the stock market. Seed financing systems that have begun to develop recently are also unlikely to solve the problems of large-scale development due to the insignificance of resources allocated for this throughout the economy.
Finally, another important resource is the development of a sales system for high-tech products. Most enterprises in the high-tech sector have virtually none. Individual positive examples do not become a model for study and replication. As a result, the marketing of high-tech products by most enterprises is very poorly organized. This largely explains the unjustifiably low share of Russian enterprises in the world market. Without experience of trading on world markets and qualified personnel, our enterprises are not able to successfully compete for markets with foreign competitors.
Based on the facts presented, we can conclude that individual strategic advantages of the Russian innovation system are not supported by a set of resources and lose their significance over time. Solving existing problems is possible through the development of innovation infrastructure.
Infrastructure of innovation activities
The main task of the innovation infrastructure is to help solve the problems listed above. Currently, there is a fairly extensive network of organizations promoting the development of innovation activities (see Table 2). It should be immediately noted that innovation infrastructure objects can solve only part of the problems and the successful development of innovation activities cannot be made solely dependent on the availability or quantity of corresponding infrastructure objects. As can be seen from Fig. 5, in order for an innovation system to function successfully, it must also have a favorable regulatory framework and an effective system for bringing products of innovative enterprises to markets.
table 2
General scheme of innovation infrastructure
| Production vein-technological composition- barking |
Consulting staff - barking |
Financial composition- barking |
Personnel composition- barking |
Information component | Sales component |
| Innovation and technology centers and technology parks | Technology transfer centers | Budget resources | Improvement of staff qualifications in the field of innovation | State system of scientific and technical information | Foreign trade associations |
| Innovation-industrial complexes | Consulting in the field of economics and finance | Budgetary and extra-budgetary funds for technological development | Training of specialists in the field of technological and scientific management | Small business support resources | Specialized bathrooms are mediocre commercial firms |
| Technology clusters | Technology consulting | Venture funds | Regional information networks | Internet | |
| Technological implementation zones | Marketing consulting | Seed and start-up funds | Internet | Exhibitions | |
| Centers for shared use of high-tech equipment | Consulting in the field of foreign economic activity | Guarantee structures and funds |
Let us characterize the role of individual infrastructure elements and the problems of their development, as well as the measures necessary for this.
Technological infrastructure
Technological infrastructure is designed to create conditions for enterprises (primarily small ones) to access production resources. These include technology parks (TPs) and innovation technology centers (ITCs), which mainly provide access to production facilities, and innovation technology complexes, which additionally provide access to production facilities.
One of the problems of the existing technological infrastructure is that in technology parks and ITCs there is practically no rotation of small enterprises (SE), that is, a small enterprise, once in a technology park, remains there indefinitely. This is due to the lack of production space in most regions of the market, and MP is forced to hold on to technology park space as long as possible. The consequence of this situation is that, on the one hand, after some time the growth in production volumes of MPs located in the technology park stops, and on the other hand, the growth in the number of MPs stops. As a result, TPs and ITCs in many cases are purely nominally objects of innovation infrastructure; rather, they are apartment buildings that bring their owners income from renting out space to small businesses. A solution to this problem is proposed by establishing a limit on the length of stay of an MP as part of a TP. However, without creating opportunities to place them in other areas, this will essentially mean the closure of part of the MP after a specified period. Most likely, the situation will quickly return to its original state due to formal “rotation” through the organization of new legal entities with a permanent composition of founders.
As a real alternative to solving this problem, we can consider the construction of industrial parks - a set of standard modules equipped with the necessary communications and production infrastructure, where small enterprises could first rent and, if they have the financial capacity, buy production space. Another option for providing access to production space is to organize industrial parks on the basis of empty or idle enterprises, of which there are quite a lot in almost all regions. Such projects are already beginning to be implemented in a number of regions.
The next issue that the technological infrastructure must solve is providing small businesses with access to production facilities. When creating areas to accommodate small enterprises, one must also keep in mind the need to provide opportunities for them to manufacture their own industrial products. Innovation-industrial complexes (IICs) and technology clusters are designed to solve this problem. IPCs were created, as a rule, on the basis of unused production capacities of large enterprises. Until now, the workload of large enterprises made it possible to count on placing orders for small business enterprises on them. At the same time, a paradoxical situation arose when large enterprises were busy with small enterprises under subcontracts, while in developed countries the situation was basically the opposite. As the economy grows, this opportunity becomes smaller, as large enterprises increase production volumes and primarily fulfill their own orders at their production base.
Recently, the organization of “clusters” has become fashionable, which actually serve as innovation-industrial parks. Clusters, as a rule, are a collection of enterprises located in one limited territory (in a large enterprise or within one city) and more or less closely connected by production ties. In essence, this definition of a cluster is almost completely identical to the concept of an innovation-technological complex. To avoid misunderstandings, it should be said right away that the concept of a competitiveness cluster, introduced by M. Porter 5, has no relation to these entities.
5 M. Porter, Competition. M.: Publishing House "Williams", 2003
For completeness, mention should also be made of technology-innovation zones, which can also be classified as elements of technological infrastructure. Recently, there has been widespread discussion of the project to create such zones. It is assumed that enterprises that will be located in these zones will have access to business infrastructure and special tax and customs regimes. So far, the conditions for the existence of enterprises in technology innovation zones have not been legally defined, and it is premature to discuss the role of such entities in the innovation system.
Centers for shared use of production equipment
It is obvious that providing all small enterprises with modern production equipment is impossible due to the fact that the relatively small volumes of their production do not allow the effective use of modern production equipment. With the cost of a modern machine being several hundred thousand dollars, only a fairly large enterprise can afford its purchase and effective operation when producing its own products (we are not considering here the issue of the availability and cost of loans for the purchase of equipment for small and medium-sized enterprises, but only the issues of its profitable operation ). Thus, for this reason, a huge layer of small and medium-sized enterprises is cut off from the use of new technologies in production. A way out of this situation is possible through the collective use of equipment in service centers.
In the West, this approach has become widespread. For example, up to 20% of laser production equipment is installed in so-called job-shops (centers that provide services for laser processing of materials). It should be noted that not only small and medium-sized, but also large enterprises are clients of such centers.
As mentioned above, the industrial machine park is aging, and providing access to modern technologies is very important not only for small and medium-sized enterprises. In modern Russian conditions, when most enterprises do not have the necessary resources to re-equip production, this approach will make it possible, at relatively low costs, to provide access to modern technologies to almost all interested enterprises, regardless of their size and production volumes. As an example, Table 3 shows comparative data on two options for equipping industrial enterprises with laser equipment. 6
6 Report on the research work "Development of a project to create a problem-oriented innovation center in the field of laser technologies." M.: Laser Association, 2003
Table 3
Comparison of laser equipment usage rates
at individual enterprises and as part of a regional center
| Index | Enterprise equipment | Equipping regional centers |
| Number of enterprises | 100 | 100 |
| Number of equipment units | 100 | 2...4 |
| Equipment costs | $30 million | $1…2 million |
| Number of specialists | 100…150 | 10…20 |
| Project implementation period | 5 years | 1 year |
| Small businesses | Do not have access | Have access |
| Equipment usage intensity | 1st shift | 2…3 shifts |
| Tax return on costs | 3 years | Less than 1 year |
With the traditional approach, when equipment is installed at each enterprise, the cost of purchasing it is 10...20 times higher than in the case of equipping shared use centers serving the same number of enterprises. An important factor in comparison is the provision of qualified equipment service personnel- equipment through shared use centers will require an order of magnitude fewer qualified specialists. Finally, the start-up period for equipment operation in the center can be significantly shorter, since more highly qualified specialists can be used to install equipment and debug technological processes.
One of the main results of organizing shared use centers will be to provide access to modern technologies for small and medium-sized enterprises, for which purchasing their own expensive technological equipment is almost impossible. If partially budgetary funds are used to equip regional centers, their payback due to an increase in production volumes of enterprises using the services of the center and a corresponding increase in tax payments can be extremely fast.
In addition to the direct return of funds invested in the shared use center from production activities, indirect effects from the activities of collective use centers should also be taken into account. They cannot be calculated with the same accuracy as production costs and enterprise income, but the following estimates give an idea of the indirect positive effect. It is known that for every ruble of costs for the production of products using lasers at the next stages of production, products worth 8...10 rubles are generated in the following stages. If we assume that taxes make up 10% of this amount, then for every ruble of products produced at the laser complex, approximately 1 ruble of tax revenue is generated throughout the entire production chain. The annual amount of work on a laser installation is approximately equal to its cost. Thus, an investment in organizing laser sites for collective use pays off only in tax revenues in approximately one year.
The given example shows the main advantages that can arise from the proposed approaches. Naturally, the example with laser centers is just an illustration and similar approaches can be used in other areas. For example, projects are underway to organize similar production facilities in the field of biotechnology.
In conclusion, we list the additional positive effects that the organization of regional centers for collective use provides:
- generation of additional production volumes,
- generation of tax revenues from increased production volumes,
- increasing competitiveness - expanding sales, increasing sales volumes of industrial products through the use of advanced production technologies, increasing the export potential of Russian manufacturing enterprises by improving the quality of products,
- creating new jobs for highly qualified personnel and expanding the volume of training of qualified personnel,
- maintaining the production potential of Russian enterprises.
As can be seen from the list above, the organization of collective use centers makes it economically feasible to provide a large number of regional industrial enterprises with access to modern technologies and provides many positive side effects that contribute to the transfer of regional industry to an innovative path of development.
Consulting infrastructure
The next block of infrastructure enterprises includes consulting organizations. The importance of these structures for ensuring innovation activity lies in the fact that innovation activity has many specific features, knowledge of which is acquired only with practical experience. The creation of small innovative enterprises (SIEs) by “non-professional” managers leads to the fact that the survival rate of such enterprises is usually low. Therefore, providing access to professional advice appears to be one of the means of increasing the efficiency of using funds allocated for innovative development. Technology transfer centers (offices) are called upon to provide a comprehensive solution to many of these issues. Currently, CTTs are created, as a rule, at large universities and academic institutes. The DTT network is much less developed in industry institutes and government scientific centers(SSC), although they are the ones who have the most significant groundwork in the development of new technologies. At the beginning of 2005, the TTC network included about 50 organizations and continues to develop intensively. CTTs are created either as structural divisions of organizations with innovative developments, or as independent legal entities. Both options have both advantages and disadvantages. So far, the existing work experience is insufficient to talk about which of the options for organizing the central heating system is more preferable.
The main task of TsTT is the commercialization of developments created in parent organizations. To solve this problem, CTT must have the ability to provide consulting services on a fairly wide range of issues - financial, economic, marketing, and often also on foreign economic activity.
The main problems that began to appear with the beginning of the development of the central heating network were the lack of qualified personnel to staff them. Often, CTT management does not know how to organize practical work on the commercialization of developments and has a poor understanding of existing opportunities. If, in parallel with the creation of the central heating system, measures are not taken to train personnel, the efficiency of the created network will be low. If the problem of personnel is solved, CTTs can become one of the important structural elements stimulating the development of innovative activity in the regions.
In addition to CTT, the consulting sector includes other organizations that are listed in Table 2. As a rule, they are universal in nature, provide services to enterprises of various specializations and are not focused only on innovation.
Training infrastructure
If we consider in more detail the problems of personnel training, we should note a whole range of problems in this area. As noted above, problems with personnel providing research and development are growing; there is an acute problem of a shortage of mid-level technical personnel and skilled workers. The problem of enterprises producing innovative products has recently been the aging of personnel who are carriers of key technologies. Without the entry of young workers, the technologies used may be partially lost.
When developing a personnel training system, it is necessary to ensure balanced training in all areas that ensure innovative activity. However, one of the main problems should be noted that currently the majority of industrial enterprises (both large and small) do not have specialists who can competently ensure the promotion of high-tech products of enterprises to the market. The total need for such personnel is several tens of thousands of people. The problem can be solved only by organizing targeted work on training such personnel with a planning horizon of 5-10 years (time for basic training of personnel and their acquisition of practical work skills).
Currently, dozens of universities across the country are training specialists in the field of management and marketing of high-tech production, but the effectiveness of this work is low. Only a small number of graduates go to work in their specialty; there are significant problems even with staffing a small number of technology transfer centers created with the participation of Rosnauka. As a rule, they are staffed by specialists who are selected based on their practical suitability for performing the tasks and functions facing the CTT.
Finally, it should be noted that there is a shortage of qualified teachers for personnel training. In many universities, teaching is conducted by specialists who have no practical experience in the issues they teach students. Training is conducted using foreign developments and manuals that do not fully reflect Russian specifics and realities, resulting in specialists who then have to gain experience over the course of several years through trial and error.
In this regard, the role of the consulting system should once again be noted. Since personnel training is a rather long and inertial process, and the time for irreversible changes in many enterprises focused on the production of high-tech products may be less than the time frame for solving the personnel problem, it is necessary to provide for the creation and development of a consulting system for industrial enterprises in the field of innovation and market promotion science-intensive products. This system does not replicate the CTT system, although it should work closely with it, but provides one-time consulting on individual issues that arise for enterprises. Perhaps it is advisable to build this system as a system for express training in the basics of innovative approaches.
At the first stage (1-3 years), the consulting system should cover the need for information in the field of promotion and marketing of innovative products of enterprises. It is advisable to provide state support for this system for the first three to five years in order to create a need among enterprises for such services (for enterprises, services should have a symbolic cost at the first stage). The basis for creating a consulting network can be the technology transfer centers currently being created, staffed with the necessary specialists. To successfully solve the problem of providing access to consulting, it is necessary to ensure support for the work of such centers from local administrations. It is advisable to link the centers being created into a single network that provides access to the consulting resources of other organizations - members of the network in the absence of the necessary specialists in the region. According to estimates, the number of consulting centers should be several hundred at the rate of 1 consulting center per 500 - 1000 industrial enterprises.
Information infrastructure
The next block of innovation support infrastructure is related to providing access to information. There is a fairly extensive network of organizations in this area, including a regional system of state centers for scientific and technical information, structures that support small businesses, and regional information networks. A large amount of information on innovation issues is available on the Internet.
The current system quite effectively solves a number of problems. Thus, technical information is now available in large volumes in almost all areas of science and technology. Access to patent information is not particularly problematic. The main information that can influence the solution of innovative development problems, and for which there is a significant deficit, is related to information about markets.
Another group of issues of information support for innovation activities is related to communicating information about new developments to potential users and organizing consultations on their use.
In 2005-06 within the framework of the Federal Target Scientific and Technical Program (FTSTP) "Research and development in priority areas of development of science and technology" for 2002 - 2006, it is planned to create a network of information and analytical centers in priority areas of development of science and technology, as well as on innovation topics. It is also planned to organize work on organizing the collection, analysis and systematization of information on completed R&D in the regions and in Russia as a whole. Significant efforts are expected to be directed toward communicating information about completed R&D to interested consumers. This work will be carried out, including at exhibition events supported by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science and Rosnauka.
Within the framework of the Federal Center for Science and Technology, work on market research and the development of business plans for organizing the production of promising high-tech products will also be supported.
Financial infrastructure
The next group of innovation infrastructure enterprises is the subject of the most lively discussion - these are the structures that provide access to innovative enterprises (both large and small) to financial resources. Currently, there are quite a few financial instruments, but statistical studies show that the main source of financing for the development of innovative industrial enterprises is their own funds. Bank loans are still too expensive and loans are too short for the development of innovative activities.
State budget resources are available mainly to large enterprises. But even for them, the scale of provision of budgetary funds is no more than 5-10% of the required volumes. The development of SIEs is financed mainly by the founders themselves, their relatives and friends. The limitation of such sources also leads to a slowdown in the growth of the number of small enterprises.
The start-up financing program carried out by the Fund for Assistance to the Development of Small Enterprises in the Scientific and Technical Sphere and local programs to support small businesses is not able to reverse the negative trends and, at best, compensates for a small part of the “natural loss” of small enterprises. There are no summary data on the support of small innovative entrepreneurship by local budgets, but it can be assumed that their influence on the dynamics of SIE is also small, perhaps with the exception of capitals and some large cities.
Venture investing, about which there has been a lot of discussion lately, still remains exotic, and there have been no significant successes in this area yet. Apparently, this is due to the fact that our industry has not yet formed the need for the development of venture approaches. Unlike developed countries, where the venture business serves the needs of large enterprises for promising developments, most Russian enterprises prefer to produce such developments on their own. In the West, this function is increasingly being externalized, that is, enterprises prefer to buy development rather than carry it out on their own - this is what becomes the basis of venture approaches. We have a significant number of in-house developers in most businesses, and businesses tend to load them first rather than third parties. Those few of our venture projects that end in the sale of created enterprises show that buyers are, as a rule, foreign companies or investors. That is, the creation of venture enterprises is work on foreign markets with all the ensuing difficulties. Another important circumstance is the current difficulty of an investor “exiting” a venture enterprise being created - this also does not contribute to the development of the venture business.
Since foreign venture financing schemes do not work well in Russian conditions, it is advisable to think about developing modifications of venture financing schemes that would allow attracting venture financing in conditions of an underdeveloped stock market, an excess of proposals for R&D development, and an undeveloped system of “exit” from created venture enterprises.
It should also be noted that recently, regional venture funds have been created in many regions. In most of these cases, the word “venture” in the name reflects only a fashionable trend. Essentially, most of these structures are funds to support innovation activities, aimed at financing R&D and not involving the creation of new enterprises.
A serious contribution to solving the problem of financing could be attracting money from large manufacturing enterprises to the innovative business. Most industrial enterprises are not yet interested in paying for (or are unable to pay for) R&D. Only very large buyers of innovations from the raw materials sector of the economy can move the situation forward. Recently, several projects have been launched to finance promising developments by such companies, but the scale of this activity is still insignificant.
Another way to attract market money to innovative enterprises is to accelerate the innovation cycle in terms of expanding the scale of enterprises entering markets with finished products. This path will allow existing innovative enterprises to receive additional resources to bring their new developments to markets.
Recently, guarantee structures and funds have been created in a number of regions, which should solve the problems of securing loans to small enterprises in the banking system. Leasing schemes for the purchase of high-tech equipment by small enterprises are also developing successfully.
As part of the work carried out by the Ministry of Industry and Science of Russia, it is planned to develop standard documents on the organization of guarantee funds in the regions, methodological materials on the organization of their work, amendments to the existing regulatory framework should be formulated to ensure the operation of such funds.
It is also worth noting the emerging system of financing innovations by business angels. Currently, several associations of private investors have been created in the regions of Russia. So far, the volume of financing for small-scale investment projects under this scheme is insignificant.
Another source of financing innovation is the participation of enterprises in international projects. Expansion of financial receipts from this source is possible with the development of a network of technology transfer centers with the participation of foreign partners.
Sales infrastructure
One of the key factors in the competitiveness of a modern enterprise is a developed sales system. Due to objective reasons related to the history of development of Russian enterprises, most of them do not have the personnel and skills in the field of marketing high-tech products. The low demand for knowledge-intensive products on the part of Russian industrial enterprises, which is often cited as one of the reasons for the weak development of the innovation sector of the economy, is explained, on the one hand, by the low solvency of enterprises, and on the other, by the lack of information about the opportunities offered by developers, that is, active work to promote innovative products to markets by their manufacturers.
This problem is even more pressing when entering global markets. In foreign markets there is practically no even initial information about the products of Russian innovative enterprises, and therefore, without serious work in this direction, one cannot hope for a radical change in the situation with the entry of our enterprises into the world markets of high-tech products and an increase in their share from today’s 0.3-0. 5% to values comparable to developed countries.
In this regard, the creation of an effective system for promoting high-tech products of Russian enterprises to domestic and world markets is an extremely urgent task that determines the success of the entire program of transferring industry to an innovative development option.
Classic methods of promotion (such as participation in exhibitions, sales via the Internet), characteristic of traditional products, do not work well for innovative products; the characteristics and consumer properties in the first stages of promotion are not familiar to potential buyers. The huge shortage of qualified personnel for this activity allows us to consider the provision of this resource as a key, if not the main factor in accelerating the innovative development of the economy.
A solution to the problem can be sought in the creation of structures for collective access to markets (by analogy with Rosoboronexport or Soviet foreign trade organizations that served export industries). To staff such structures, it is possible to recruit a sufficient number of qualified specialists who will provide not one, but several enterprises at once, united on a regional or industry basis.
Naturally, it is necessary to develop other methods of promotion that currently exist - through exhibition activities, professional associations of enterprises, intermediary firms and a system of consulting and marketing firms.
Conclusion
The above analysis of the state of innovation infrastructure allows us to conclude that there are serious imbalances in the creation of infrastructure organizations. While in some areas there is a fairly developed system, in others almost no work has begun. A serious task for the near future is to create an infrastructure for innovation that allows necessary balance resources of innovative enterprises.