Are Innovation Companies’ Leaders Ready to Start a Dialogue About the Future?

On 17 June, 2013 the Association of Russian Managers hosted a round table discussion which continued the series of public debates on the Russian long-term S&T Foresight until 2030, commissioned to the HSE by the RF Ministry of Education and Science. The vision of global challenges and windows of opportunity opening for the national innovation system based on this large-scale project, was presented in the paper by Alexander Chulok.

The event organisers — the Association of Russian Managers (ARM), the Council of Associations’ Heads and Innovation Companies’ Leaders, and Vneshtorgclub — have gathered around the table influential experts — representatives of large companies and development institutes. The RVC’s position was presented by Evgeny Kuznetsov, head of Strategic Communications Department, and Mikael Gorsky, senior adviser. Andrei Ziuzin of Cisco Systems (director for Skolkovo Foundation liaisons), Maxim Kiselev, Skolkovo Industrial Park development director, and Vladimir Rubanov, general director of “Intellect” Smart Information Technologies Centre, actively contributed to the discussion. Andrei Lapshov, head of the ARM committee on innovation-based economy development, acted as moderator of the debates.

Alexander Chulok: “Foresight is a new engine for shaping a uniform national long-term development strategy”

Alexander Chulok, head of the HSE ISSEK’s Foresight Centre department, was invited as the key speaker. Judging by the lively discussion which followed his presentation, the participants were particularly impressed by one of its central ideas — about Foresight being a new engine for shaping a uniform national long-term development strategy. Alexander demonstrated how using this methodology, public authorities develop strategic programme-based solutions for increasingly longer periods, while large companies try to assess their positions on future markets. Foresight not only allows to imagine contours of a “possible future”, but provides answers to the question “what should we do to make it happen?” — in the form of precise road maps for developing innovation system’s elements (industries, companies, product groups and technologies). By developing a language based on “practical solutions”, and in effect acting as an interpreter for science and business, Foresight consolidates and stimulates innovation environment.

Vladimir Rubanov, head of “Intellect” Smart Information Technologies Centre (the company was recently included in Gartner's Cool Vendor 2013 list, “Information governance and master data management” category), noted that approaches to new frontiers of knowledge via research in various disciplines’ ”junction areas” was a major trend on the international research agenda. As an example, he cited convergence of nano, bio, info and cognitive technologies (NBIC) — one of the fastest-growing technology areas. In the light of new objectives, it’s now very important that biologists and, say, IT professionals should be able to agree to make a coordinated effort to move on to common goals — and ideally, to speak the same language. The speaker’s second idea was that the speed the reality is changing at, forces us to look for reference points not in space, but in time. “We used to try to control space, territory, but now we strive to control time”, postulated Vladimir Rubanov.

Maxim Kiselev, development director of Skolkovo Industrial Park, was quite sceptical about the business sector’s readiness to work on shaping a long-term common future. According to him, companies’ position in this regard is far from being proactive. “They live in the present, not in the future,” noted Maxim. “They’re only interested in the near future, their planning horizon is 5-10 years at the most”. And companies’ approach to global trends is purely cognitive; whatever happens, they always look at things from the “bottom line” point of view.

Screenshot from internet broadcast of the round table discussion

Mikael Gorsky, senior adviser at RVC, made a reply presentation, introducing himself as a person who “actually applies Foresight studies’ results to practice”. There’re many visions of the future, noted he, and it makes sense to use the only working yardstick there is to evaluate the quality of Foresight projects — the amount of money spent on them. “Cheap Foresight we don not believe, but if the study was expensive, we’ll believe its results” — shared a simple formula the senior adviser. Otherwise the boldest dreams in Nikita Khrushchev’s spirit (“Let’s plant corn all over the place!”) can be legitimised by calling them “Foresight” — albeit only at the expert debates level.

In a reply comment Alexander Chulok defined basic Foresight principles adopted by the Higher School of Economics: 1) always having a precise and conclusive evidence base; 2) recruiting key stakeholders (federal and regional public authorities, science and business); 3) integrating Foresight results into the decision-making system.

Discussion on practical application of Foresight studies’ results highlighted one of their key objectives — developing a common language, agreed terminology, and shared methodological approaches. Solving this problem would be a major objective of the unified national technology Foresight system, which is currently being actively developed.

Material composed by Elena Gutaruk