S&T Foresight prospects were discussed by the board of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs
At the meeting of the board of directors of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RUIE) on October 8, Alexander Chulok, deputy director of the HSE Foresight Centre told representatives of the expert and business communities about the prospects the S&T foresight system opens to Russian companies.
The RUIE board meets twice a year, bringing together key players of big Russian business, experts, government officials, and representatives of the academic community. Specifically, at the October 8 meeting were present the RUIE president Alexander Shokhin; Alexei Mordashov, general director of Severstal company; Vladimir Yakunin, president of Russian Railways corporation; David Yakobashvili, chairman of the board of Bioenergy corporation; and Igor Rudensky, chairman of the State Duma Committee for Economic Policy, Innovations and Entrepreneurship.
The discussion was focused on import substitution problems and strategies to increase competitiveness of the Russian economy in the current international situation. The RUIE meeting demonstrated that the state and the business community are moving in the same direction. “Obviously, business realises the need to apply new technologies and increase productivity”, noted Alexander Chulok, deputy director of the HSE Foresight Centre. “The question all participants of the meeting were interested in, directly or indirectly, was how to identify priority R&D areas to fund, in which innovative projects invest. Business community is primarily interested in specific areas and activities, where applied research has the best prospects”.
According to Mr Chulok, we are at the threshold of a new technological wave. Production paradigm is shifting radically, new platforms are emerging (additive production systems, cloud computing), which will serve as foundations for new global industries. Russian companies must not waste time and actively integrate into such platforms. “Given the changes in the international situation during the previous six months, the first priority now is achieving technological security”, noted the researcher. “Therefore we need to pay particular attention to developing technologies critically important not just to defence, but to securing reliable operation of more important consumer markets such as drugs, food, catalysts for production of petrol, etc., and basic infrastructure in general”.
At the same time, a whole host of other global challenges are becoming more acute, which directly affect Russia: demography, epidemics, high sickness and mortality rates, depletion of easily available energy resources, water shortages in several regions, growing cyber-threats, etc. The S&T foresight system should provide answers to these challenges.
The HSE acts as a research and methodological coordinator of the system, performing, among other things, the function of mediator between all participants — business, science, the state, universities, technology platforms, and regional clusters. The S&T Russian Foresight 2030 (commissioned to the HSE by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science and approved by the government on January 3, 2014) can serve as a navigator to ensure the system’s successful operation. The study identified global challenges and trends, prospective markets and research topics in high-priority S&T areas which can be particularly useful to companies. “All these reports are publicly available”, noted Alexander Chulok at the meeting. “The rest is up to you”.