Either the West, or the East... The state does not know how to build an innovative economy

Alexey Chadayev, political analyst

While I was watching the broadcast of the meeting of the State Council on Science and Education, somehow a short speech was formed by itself, which, I think, would be appropriate there - no matter in whose mouth. So.

The question to which all reports at the State Council are reduced is the question of how much the state should spend on science. In fact, if the situation continues to be as it is now, when Russian scientific developments have two paths - either to lie on the table, or to be at an early stage, bought up in the bud together with the development team of multinational companies - the answer to it is: not at all. We teach people for the money of taxpayers for a long time and dearly, then we pay for their work in scientific institutions, and then transnational companies make money on the results of their work, which also sell them to us, already in the form of a finished consumer product.

It is correct to pose the question not about how much money to spend on science, but about how to make the entire chain work: fundamental science (by definition a costly and irrecoverable industry) - applied science (where potentially commercializable technologies are already emerging) - venture (where technologies are being rolled out for commercial use) - business (where these already commercially adapted technologies are scaled to the country and to foreign markets).

Enough of fairy tales about the innovative economy "from the garage". Small and medium-sized businesses can be a driver of new technologies only if there is an excess of money in the economy suitable for high-risk investments. If, as in our case, money is expensive, then the risks associated with new technologies are up to large business and state-owned companies, which have sufficient "gravity" to engage in innovations without the risk of going broke.

Accordingly, there are two ways, conventionally - "American" and "Chinese". The first is to build an ecosystem based on a deliberate surplus of investment money, and a multi-storey machine for "stuffing" them into various promising projects, of which nine will die, one will survive - but will still beat off the costs for all ten. The second is to centrally build companies - "national champions", manually managing this process from the start-up stage to billion-dollar turnovers and large-scale external expansion: all the "red chips" from HUAWEI to SAIC went this way. You have to choose; but we still do not really do either one or the other, more precisely, both, but in the end it turns out, like in Rusnano.

Original is here.