Innovation and Technological Development of Industrial Regions Under Social and Economic Insecurity

The article is devoted to the identification of the characteristics and priorities of innovation and technological development in the industrial regions of the Russian Federation in the context of the ongoing global crisis. The authors come from the hypothesis that, in these circumstances, the strategy of innovative development of industrial regions, in order to ensure their sustainability and the creation of conditions for further growth, should be an integral part of their industrial policies and focus primarily on the modernization and improvement of technical and technological level of basic units. On the basis of the analysis of statistical data about the status of the innovation capacity in the Russian Federation, the authors have identified the root causes of the continuing backlog of advanced foreign countries by the level of innovative development (raw-material orientation of the Russian economy that enhances the technological dependence of the developed countries; insufficient financial support for innovation activities by the state; the orientation of innovation in imitation and borrowing). The necessity to take into account in the development and implementation of the socio-economic strategic regions of the Russian Federation and the close relationship between the industrial-technological and innovation component of social development is proved. In order to improve the effectiveness of regional development policies, the classification of Russian regions considering their industrial and technological specialization is proposed, the required elements and characteristics of effective innovation systems for each type of region are allocated. In the article, the proposals on measures of the state support for innovation development of industrial regions, with the aim of improving their sustainability and competitiveness in the face of geopolitical and economic uncertainty are determined. The article is addressed to professionals in the field of theory and practice in the management of innovative processes.The article has been prepared with the support of Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation, project 14–02–00331 Innovative and technological development of a region: assessment, forecasting, and ways of achievement»

New forms of regional industrial policy in Europe: How do policy makers understand 'competitiveness' and 'clusters'?

The last decade has seen a revival of regional industrial policy in the Western world. New policies have been built on recent insights into the drivers of competitive advantage and are characterized by a focus on local production systems, on networking and partnerships, and more strategic forms of policy intervention. In addition, policy formulation and implementation has generally become part of an interactive process of consultation and consensus building, and, to a large extent, involves the co-ordination and reshaping of existing instruments rather than the development of entirely new ones. This paper will discuss the emergence of new forms of industrial policy targeted on regional ?competitiveness? on the basis of case studies undertaken in Germany, the UK and Spain. The aim of the paper is to understand how the concept and understanding of ?competitiveness? by local makers and other actors has influenced the shaping of local industrial policy. Since all the case studies involve laggard regions, one of the key issues of the debate is how policy makers perceive the balance between more ingenious, innovation-oriented approaches and approaches targeted in foreign investments. To understand the different outcomes in the various regions, account is taken of the governance framework for industrial policy making and implementation, the concepts and models invoked and used by policy makers, the impact of external factors such as funding conditions and European programs and, most fundamentally, the industrial and political traditions which characterize each region. The paper will point at some of the remarkable changes concepts have made on their way from theoretical and conceptual thinking to policy implementation, and will discuss the implications of these changes for academic research as well as policy-making. The work for this paper has been funded under the European Programmes ADAPT (Core project) and HCM (EUNIT network)

Towards an Intellectual Property Rights Strategy for Innovation in Europe

On October 13, 2009 the Science and Technology Options Assessment Panel (STOA) together with Knowledge4Innovation/The Lisbon Forum, supported by Technopolis Consulting Group and TNO, organised a half-day workshop entitled ‘Towards an Intellectual Property Rights Strategy for Innovation in Europe’. This workshop was part of the 1st European Innovation Summit at the European Parliament which took place on 13 October and 14 October 2009. It addressed the topics of the evolution and current issues concerning the European Patent System as well as International Protection and Enforcement of IPR (with special consideration of issues pertaining to IP enforcement in the Digital Environment). Conclusions drawn point to the benefits of a comprehensive European IPR strategy, covering a broad range of IP instruments and topics

Linking Innovative Potential to SME Performance: An Assessment of Enterprises in Industrial South Wales

The attraction of inward investment from the UK and from overseas was the main focus of regional development policy in Wales for much of the 1970s and 1980s. Whilst Wales has been particularly successful in attracting foreign enterprise, the contribution of new investors to improving longer term regional economic prospects has been questioned at several levels. With concerns over inward investor stability, embeddedness, and contribution to local value added, increasing weight has been given to the encouragement, and development of innovative indigenous SMEs in the Welsh economy. General and sectoral initiatives to encourage SME development and innovation in Wales have also taken place against a background of historically low levels of new firm formation in the region, together with the presence of factors expected to hinder SME growth including low levels of capital availability. Ultimately, it is hoped that a strongly performing indigenously controlled and innovative SME sector will go some way to improving regional growth prospects, and hence play a role in reducing the GDP per capita gap between Wales and the UK. During the 1990s a series of research and consultancy studies in Wales have been undertaken seeking to audit SME activities, define needs and identify market failures in provision of information and services. These have formed the basis of revised policy and then for new resource directions emanating at the European, regional and local levels. Encouraging innovative activity has been at the forefront of the network of initiatives currently underway in Wales. New initiatives have often been instituted without a clear appreciation of the nature of innovation, and how innovative activities link to innovative outputs and then feed through to improved business performance. This paper examines the link between innovative activity, outcomes and the performance of SMEs in Wales. A range of European, UK and locally developed initiatives in Wales seek to encourage innovative activity in indigenous SMEs. However, it is the contention of this paper that these initiatives have often been instituted without a clear appreciation of how, if, and which innovative activities feed through to improved business performance. The paper offers a general method of assessing the innovative potential (the configuration of management practices, capabilities, internal and external linkages facilitating the generation of appropriation of ideas) of manufacturing SMEs. This then leads on to an examination of how far innovative potential is connected to operational and general business performance. The paper describes how the model was developed and used to assess the innovative potential of a sample of manufacturing SMEs in Industrial South Wales, and how far the innovative potential can be linked to improved operational and business performance. The introduction to the paper reviews current literature on innovation in SMEs, and demonstrates how far recent studies have succeeded in measuring, and then linking innovative inputs of SMEs to innovative outputs and firm performance. The second section builds upon the review to develop a working model of an innovative SME. Innovation is considered not only in terms of new product or process development but more generally as practice. The model reveals the innovative firm as one that identifies, interprets, and applies knowledge effectively, and as appropriate throughout the organisation. The model described represents a synthesis of previous research. Key factors in the model include strategy and the techniques and practices deployed to facilitate the development and appropriation of ideas for innovation. Broadly this focuses on SME commitment to innovation, and management practices supporting this commitment. The third section describes how the model was operationalised into an auditing tool, and then used to assess the innovative potential of a sample of manufacturing SMEs in Industrial South Wales. The fourth section summarises the results from the initial research programme, and in particular, considers whether the unique operating structures usually associated with SMEs hinder or facilitate the adoption of new structures for organisational learning. Moreover the section examines whether the existence of certain configurations of practices coincide with improved business performance and operational efficiencies. The conclusions consider these results in the context of the directions being adopted by current regional SME policy initiatives in Industrial South Wales.

Europe should stop taxing innovation

In this Policy Brief, Bruegel Senior Fellow Bruno van Pottelsberghe makes the argument in favour of a single EU patent system. The author explains that the absence of a one-stop-shop for EU-wide patents hampers innovation and will pose serious challenges to small and medium-sized companies in the face of global competition. This paper analyses how a uniform patent system can sustain long-term competitiveness and boost growth and thereby achieve EU2020 targets. It makes policy recommendations in four key areas of a single patent system - language, complexity, affordability and governance.   

Experiments on domain adaptation for patent machine translation in the PLuTO project

The PLUTO1 project (Patent Language Translations Online) aims to provide a rapid solution for the online retrieval and translation of patent documents through the integration of a number of existing state-of-the-art components provided by the project partners. The paper presents some of the experiments on patent domain adaptation of the Machine Translation (MT) systems used in the PLuTO project. The experiments use the International Patent Classification for domain adaptation and are focused on the English–French language pair

Substantiating the Transformations in the Priorities of the Innovations and Technology Development of the Russian Regions amid the Global Crisis

The purpose of this research is to substantiate the necessity for Russia to adopt a neo-industrialization policy as a tool for overcoming the consequences of the global crisis. The research hypothesis assumes that the competitiveness of Russian regions in crisis conditions cannot be enhanced without transforming the regional innovation priorities with regard to modern science and technology developments, production demands for modernization and import substitution, and accelerated the formation of the high technology sector. The authors believe that one of the main reasons for the current structural crisis in Russia is ignoring the determining impact of the innovations and technology development on the country’s regional socio-economic systems as a whole. The verification of this hypothesis based on the analysis of the official statistics revealed a number of negative tendencies impeding the country in overcoming the crisis phenomena through accelerated development of modern technological paradigms: decreasing staff component and deteriorating quality of the Russian science, widening the gap between the financial support in Russia and developed countries, reducing opportunities for innovation business development, and a lack of motivation for manufacturers to engage in innovation activities. The authors substantiate the necessity to strengthen the state innovation policy for the recovery of Russia’s socio-economic situation. They propose a methodological approach to choosing the priorities of innovation support for the economic development of Russian regions based on a comprehensive review of the condition and challenges in the development of research potential, the region’s business environment, and its ability to master innovations. Calculations are made to assess the possibility of creating innovation activity centers in the Russian regions of various types aimed at increasing the specific weight of high-tech companies focused on the production of innovations to address import substitution and economy neo-industrialization tasks urgent for Russia. The authors developed their own methodology to evaluate the possibilities of forming various types of innovation activity centers in the Russian regions aimed at increasing the specific weight of the high-tech sector and creating domestic high-tech companies, and focused on the production of innovations to address import substitution and economy neo-industrialization tasks urgent for Russia. The article is addressed to innovation management experts.The article has been supported by the Russian Foundation for Humanities, Project № 14–02–00331 "Innovation and Technology Development of the Region: Assessment, Projections, and Ways of Progressing"