A short course of an innovative entrepreneur

Field notes from the USA

For an anniversary number, a doct. Economy. Irina Dezhin , head of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences, sent her notes on a business trip to the United States, in which the Russians studied the American experience of building a chain “Fundamental Science - Applied Science - Commercial Development”.

This “sketch from nature” appeared during a trip to the United States - I participated in a “training course” for Russian university offices of technology transfers. The goal is to visit different American universities in a few days and understand how similar services work there, what issues they solve, what difficulties they have and how they overcome them.

There was a lot of interesting in the scientific and practical sense, but it was even more interesting to see the differences and similarities in “innovative cultures” in the broad sense of the word. There are dramatic differences in mentality, but there are amazing similarities.

The differences are more or less obvious, and they are often talked about. For example, that America is the most entrepreneurial country. The country of emigrants, which means that people who came in search of something better. One of the directors of the business accelerator, which we visited, continued this thought: people who are dissatisfied with something and who come for the best share, again become dissatisfied and then again want changes, and this is the engine of progress. A kind of self -developing system, and it is difficult to stimulate with different special measures. Hence the mentality in which the failures in innovative entrepreneurship are not something terrible (unless, of course, the failures are repeated one after another). Moreover, failures are considered in a positive way-this is the acquisition of experience that can not only be learned independently, but also transfer it to someone else. That is, failure is a method of learning, no less significant, and maybe even more than success.

What is the most important for innovative, venture entrepreneurship? As it turned out, two factors are “the rule of law” and intuition. “The wonderful two! And they stand ours ” - after all, intuition is also the result of many years of experience. The one that we have practically no. True, it is not clear that in Russian conditions you can develop faster - intuition or supremacy of the law.

The latter is a very difficult task, and what and how it was discussed, it became more and more clearly: the movement to the rule of law in the broad sense, which also includes ethical aspects, is a road for us along which the very first steps are taken. For example, we were told how it is important to carefully determine authorship in patent applications - and not from the point of view whether there were simply no talk about this inventors of various kinds of bosses - and who has the right, working on the project, is considered the author of the invention, and who does not. And this is due not only to scrupulousness and a developed legal system, but also by economic aspects. A patent is not a sign of pride and prestige, not a reporting line in the university development program and not an analogue of a scientific article. This is what ultimately brings royalties to the authors, which means that we must clearly determine who has the right to them.

Another example is all kinds of “metrics” (in our opinion, “indicators”) to evaluate the work of technology transfers. At first it was not clear what we ask and what they were talking about. We have a general university report, according to many quantitative indicators, including the number of small enterprises created, patent applications, etc. Their metrics are set by the most “innovative structure” for themselves, for self -esteem of their work, and not in order to report to the government. Therefore, they talked about how important it is to determine how many people they trained, how many new products they launched, how many jobs appeared.

Our certificate: Technology transfers are already a term of the technology. You can also call them “centers of commercialization”, “technology transfer departments” are structures, as a rule, based on former patent universities, which are engaged in commercialization of scientific results (patenting, licensing, creating small enterprises, searching for contracts with industrial enterprises, etc.).

We were asked - why calculate the number of small companies created? They can formally find them as much as you like, what is the meaning of this? We modestly replied that this is how it was instituted, such rules were established by the government. In response, the sacramental followed: “Is there a leader in the government who understands what is needed for innovation? Anyone who can change the rules? ” In response, we were already surprised-how can you just go and "explain" to someone? Does it work like that? Everywhere there is a bureaucracy, in a good and bad sense of the word, and nothing easily resolves so easily.

And this is already in common in systems. And yet, we received a wonderful comment in connection with the story of the improvement of American patent legislation. Now it is changing in a radical way, for the first time since 1952, and it is not yet clear whether it is good or bad. There were more skeptics, and one of them said: “When we have one some aspect will improve with us, this suddenly entails a deterioration in ten other conditions.” “Just like ours,” I thought.

It also turned out that they, like ours, have a very skeptical attitude to the results of “forecasts” and “Forsytes”. There is even a special word “guess-timate” for this (approximate assessment)-this is how our mentors called the results of forecast studies.

Suddenly, it turned out to be generally generally how the fashion is perceived for “new words”. Now such a “fashionable word” in the venture business is an “ecosystem”. It is amazing that in America, as in Russia, venture entrepreneurs and all related to venture business are happy to use it with pleasure, and the professor froze from it.

And about words and meanings: our state is the main player, an important and often frightening factor in the “ecosystem”. In the assessments and stories of Russian experts, dependence on the state, on state decisions and state policy, was all the time. The autonomy is minimal, but this is not only a consequence of the fact that state regulation in Russia is overwhelming. This is also the legacy of the Soviet mentality, and even in young people, according to which individualism is certainly bad.

And in order to overcome this, one must go to the USA not in large groups, but individually, to get into Wednesday without looking back and support for compatriots. Switch, become part of another world, understand and perceive it - this will be one of the first steps, if not to the rule of law, then to the development of intuition.

Of course, written above is precisely “notes” that do not claim to be universality, to correctness in any conditions and circumstances. This is a small study dedicated to the anniversary of the Trinity Option, boldly promoting non -standard thoughts and original solutions.