ISSN 1995-459X print E-ISSN 2312-9972 online ISSN 2500-2597 online English
Editor-in-chief Leonid Gokhberg
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2018. vol. 12. No. 2
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Strategies
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6–22
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The importance of financing science, technology and innovation (STI) is growing increasingly relevant and is changing its content. New, more comprehensive financing mechanisms are emerging. With STI costs rising and government budgets shrinking, research and innovation has become more cooperative and network-based. The paper discusses the different instruments and incentives available for governments to improve the financing of innovation. Two case studies illustrate government efforts from the United Kingdom and Brazil towards innovation financing issues. Lastly, recent and future STI financing trends are reviewed. Governments continue to play a crucial and determining role in STI financing, whether through financial incentives, fiscal incentives or a mix of both. Countries with low national innovation performance should assign more weight to fiscal incentives, while countries with high innovation performance financial incentives prove more efficient. |
Innovation
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24–35
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We present the dynamics of the position of Russian manufacturing subsidiaries of Western MNCs in 2012–2016. The analysis is based on interviews with the heads of subsidiaries, a repeated survey of plant managers and on secondary data on subsidiaries’ activities. We propose a new portfolio model that desalinates “the core” and “the periphery” of the corporation and further allocates peripheral subsidiaries into several classes depending on intensity of value transfer from and to a subsidiary and the possibility to apply a “standard” set of instruments for capital allocation decisions. We argue that in the current situation of the Russian economy the only possibility for Russian manufacturing subsidiaries to remain close to the corporate core is to demonstrate high net profitability of assets. Otherwise subsidiaries are downgraded into “sticks”. That position enables subsidiary managers to enjoy high autonomy and wide subsidiary mandates, but endanger the long-term perspectives on maintaining innovativeness and competitiveness of subsidiaries. |
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36–48
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The technology acceptance model (TAM) has long been applied to investigate consumer attitudes towards novel solutions and identify incentives that increase their willingness to adopt them. A cumulative tradition has already been developed in this stream of research. Using a modified TAM model, the authors explore factors that affect the intention of Vietnamese banks and their clients to adopt internet banking services. Currently, there is a number of factors hindering the diffusion of internet banking, particularly the underdevelopment of the technological infrastructure, the lack of investment, and the habits of the majority of providers and consumers of services to interact via traditional formats. The study finds out that the adoption of internet banking could be encouraged by perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and, finally customer satisfaction. Among the important factors to ensure these conditions are an advanced customer support system, user-friendly interface, promptness of services, and transparency of banking operations. Among the recommendations put forward by the authors, special attention is given to the requirements for the skills of bank personnel, the need for continuous training, and the establishment of targeted strategic indicators at the public level that facilitate the embeddedness of internet banking in the life of Vietnamese society. |
Science
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50–61
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Universities are increasingly perceived as agents involved in regional development. It is now recognized that academic contributions to the socioeconomic environment go well beyond scientific investigation and teaching activities, and incorporate market-oriented initiatives to the academic mission. However, these effects are geographically bounded. Given these conditions, this article aims at addressing universities’ impacts upon output vectors of localized innovation ecosystems. Using data from cities and microregions in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil observed throughout the period of 2002–2014, we address universities’ effects upon the local-level generation of patents and utility models, software production and emergence of knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship. Besides the scant available evidence on innovation ecosystems located outside developed economies, dealing with a developing country also means we are addressing an analytical unit in which universities play a critical role in terms of knowledge production and diffusion, a function of the weak competences of local firms. Findings support the hypothesis that major academic institutions lie at the heart of innovation ecosystems, but impacts are mostly local, happening more strongly at the level of cities. While the formation of human capital also contributes to innovative output, its impacts are of minor relevance as compared to higher education institutions that achieve excellence in research. This poses severe challenges for policymakers when targeting the formation and enhancement of initiatives to develop innovative ecosystems, particularly for peripheral areas. First, these regions are not likely to reap substantial benefits from proximity to successful hubs. Beyond that, creating local conditions is not as straightforward as sometimes announced in political discourse. In this regard, some fundamental vectors are not easily manipulated in the short-term and there seems to be fundamental importance attributed to long-term, evolutionary conditions. Such is the case for high-quality universities. |
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62–76
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Open innovation platforms (OIPs) as a new tool fostering the convergence of innovation, education, and research activities have been gaining popularity over the course of recent years. Innovative activities are evolving towards more agile and user-driven processes. OIPs are the key mechanism for orchestrating these processes, providing a qualitatively new space for the interactions between science, education, and innovation. Platform actors have the opportunity to share knowledge and use the urban environment as a ‘living lab’. Using the case of Tampere (Finland), the paper explores OIPs’ role in the orchestration of joint innovation projects within the framework of the ‘smart city’ model. The functions of the platforms in coordinating innovation are illustrated by the practices of three universities implementing the ‘knowledge triangle’ strategy. The initial data for the analysis of the cases were collected within the framework of the Six Cities Strategy project. The authors were guided by a participatory action research (PAR) approach and directly participated in events aimed at the development of strategy. The results of the case analysis should contribute to the evolution of the OIPs concept both from the academic and policy perspectives. The authors highlight some tentative policy implications and recommendations. |
Master Class
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78–90
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The article considers the psychological mechanisms of collective foresight activities. Corporate foresight is considered a collective relection, an open strategic dialogue about group objectives and joint actions that helps group members construct a collective image of the future and adapt to future challenges. The results of expert panel revealed several organizational and psychological barriers that hinder corporate foresight effectiveness in Russia: distrust toward long-term forecasting, the avoidance of responsibility for one’s own future, a poor focus on the future, and low levels of social cooperation. Special attention is paid to overcoming the cognitive biases and socio-psychological effects during foresight sessions that hinder group reflection, including: the effects of overconfidence, the desirability effect, framing, future anxiety, neglect of the scope of risk, future stereotyping, uncertainty of outcome, availability heuristic, the generalization of fictional evidence, the visualization effect, hindsight bias, future discounting, cognitive dissonance, regression to the mean, planning fallacy, explanation effect, common knowledge and polarization effects, technophile’s bias, and self-fulfilling prophecies. Directions of future psychological research in the field of foresight studies are proposed. |
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