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CONTINUOUS FORMATION AS THE SUBJECT AND OBJECT OF INNOVATIVE ACTIVITY, AN ESTIMATION OF EFFICIENCY AND QUALITY OF CONTINUOUS FORMATION
FEATURES OF INNOVATIVE ACTIVITY OF UNIVERSITIES OF DIFFERENT TYPES V. N. Skvortsov
The majority of Russian universities determine their strategy as innovative. They recognize the target priority of active self-development, transformation of themselves into common scientific, educational, innovative and informational complexes which are capable of carrying out innovations. Universities, which act as a kind of group of educational and scientific research centers, are effective but local structures, weakly incorporated into the innovative system of the state. At the same time, the task which the Russian economy faces in years to come, including towards the university community, is to create a common state innovative system. And the first demand it must respond to is its systematic integrity.
It was this side of the national innovative system that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev mentioned when he spoke on 18 April 2008 at Dubna at a meeting of the Presidium of the State Council of Russia. In his speech he stressed that in the country the main elements of the Russian innovative system have already been created and are functioning, but instruments of supporting innovations are weakly connected, and individual cycles of innovative production are separate and badly linked to each other. He went on to say: ... “...we...are forced to state openly that today they are essentially not a system. Although we may use this term “innovative system”, it is essentially not yet a system: it is a selection of close but so far not sufficiently heterogeneous elements. As a result both the scale and the return from innovative activity so far remain very low”. To confirm this, Medvedev gave figures: “.the percentage of industrial enterprises carrying out development and introduction of technological innovations does not exceed. 10%. And the percentage of innovative production in the total volume of production of industrial manufacture is just 5.5%... It is clear that decisions must be found which make it possible to ensure a mass, serial creation of innovations, so that the percentage of enterprises carrying out technical innovations grows to 40-50%, and the percentage of innovative production in the total volume of industrial production grows to 20-25%. At
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the same time, internal expenses on research and development should grow from 1% of GDP today to 3% of GDP, including by increasing expenditure of the private budget on science”. Medvedev continued: "I stress that these are absolutely realistic guidelines, which the national innovative system should reach by 2020”. In this speech by the president, the temporal and qualitative parameters for realizing the goal of the national innovative system are given. The social and economic policy of the state will be focused on carrying this out over the next decade.
There are numerous classifications of innovations, at the basis of which different criteria are placed. We use the classification of innovations presented in the monograph “Entrepreneurial universities in the innovative economy”. According to this, all types of innovations at university are divided into the following groups: (a) economic innovations in the sphere of goods and services; (b) technological innovations in the sphere of production or servicing; (c) organizational innovations connected with a change in the general organizational structure of an organization and its subdivisions; (d) management innovations affecting the psychology and behavior of employees of the organization1. The authors of the classification link economic innovations with goods produced by the university. Universities offer goods and services of their activity on different markets, so economic innovations are realized in different forms of activity - education, scientific research and service.
However, despite the similarity of the general direction of development, there is a significant diversity of innovative strategies. In many ways, this is because it depends on whether the university is classical or technical. We will try to discover the differences of the innovative policy of classical and technical universities, making a comparison within the framework of such economic innovations as products of scientific activity and educational services.
One of the most important factors in choosing an option of innovative strategy is the predominance of connections with fundamental or applied science. As we know, classical universities are the producers, keepers and distributors primarily of fundamental knowledge, which does not rule out an organic approach of studies on applied aspects of a certain general question.
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Предпринимательские университеты в инновационной экономике / под общей ред. профессора Ю.Б. Рубина. М.: ООО «Маркет ДС Корпорейшн", 2005. С. 102.
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Departments of technical universities mainly carry out applied studies. Innovations at technical universities are most closely linked with specific directions of scientific technical progress. Specialists that carry out special studies note that projects of technical universities have a more clearly expressed applied character: modifications of existing goods, projects of automation of various technological processes, individual forms of equipment and devices. Classical universities propose fundamentally new technologies and materials. However, in general the activity of classical universities in innovative activity of regions is lower than at technical universities. For example, the latter began to create technology parks in the early 1990s, while many classical universities have yet to acquire an equivalent innovative infrastructure of their own. Innovative projects of technical universities find it easy to receive financing not only from business, but from their own funds. An analysis of the work of universities in the field of innovative activity at the expense of funds from the Fund for assisting development of innovative activity of the university (conducted in 2002) showed that 73.6% of supported innovative projects went to technical universities, 16.5% to classical universities, and 9.9% to other universities.1
Another important factor in selecting a strategy is the "amplitude” of the interdisciplinary approach. The complex of scientific disciplines of the classical university allows any problem of public development to be examined in a natural scientific, sociological and humanitarian aspect. Of course, the thoroughness of studies is not realized completely, but nevertheless, at the initial, conceptual stage of the innovative process, when the public requirements in innovations of different kinds are outlined and the direction of scientific studies is determined, classical universities interpret the very idea of public demands in a rather global sense. They also try to examine consequences of introducing innovations based on criteria of socio-economic effectiveness on the basis of an interdisciplinary approach to rather broad time frames. Thus, their inclination towards fundamental topics, to discoveries on which numerous innovations of a more private nature can subsequently be based, receive additional stimulus thanks to the methodological base. However, this creates additional difficulties for classical universities in receiving funding for fundamental studies, which in the majority of cases cannot be commercialized.
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Чванова М.С. Роль классического университета в развитии инновационной экономики региона socio.tamb.ru/12.htm
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At technical universities, as was already noted, innovative management is more successful in issues of creating infrastructure that bring profits. They are more frequently able to put all three types of economic innovations "on sale”, so they find themselves more frequently in the group of "three-product universities” (see table).
Table
Typology of universities by complexity of innovations produced
Types of activity carried out by university One-product Two-product Three-product
university university university
Educational activity + + +
Scientific research activity + +
Service activity +
An innovative university of an entrepreneurial type, which has been discussed so much in recent years, is a three-product university, because it works successfully on three markets:
(a) on the market of educational services its success is based on the ability to update study both in contents (new directions, specialties) and in the form and timeframes of study);
(b) on the market of products of scientific technical activity its success is based on the rather high quality and demand of scientific developments (including high-technology production);
(c) on the market of services the university primarily acts as the supplier of services that are highly valued by the clients, connected with the introduction of innovations of various time (developed at the university) in the sphere of manufacture - information, expert consulting services, testing services, and also certification and standardization of innovations.
The tool of commercialization of scientific developments of entrepreneurial universities is served, as we know, by the above-mentioned technology parks, which include problem, research and testing laboratories, enterprises of high-technology business, training scientific production centers, incubators of small business, design bureaus, IT structures etc. Technology parks also include innovative structures of regional significance such as centers for development of innovative activity, centers of transfer of technology, patent services, information and analytical departments etc.
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Training specialists to manage innovative activity is carried out by technical universities also through these structures, opening special schools at technology parks offering courses for learning skills for solving a complex of tasks to create, protect and commercialize high technology products. The term “practically oriented” at technical universities is not only applied to scientific research, but to study courses and even to teachers capable of teaching these courses.
There are differences between classical and technical universities also in the field of educational innovations. Educational innovative activity is nothing less than work on diversifying educational and scientific products. It is realized in the form of new faculties, new specialties and directions of training young people. Here there is a specific problem - in forming the structure of specialties and contents of study programs, one must take into account and coordinate the prospective (connected with forecast tendencies of the innovative development of society) and current (reflecting the difficulties of transition to this development) requirements of the labor market.
Classical universities differ by the enormous diversity of study disciplines and educational programs. At the same time, they position themselves as educational establishments whose graduates stand out by their broad outlook, ability to go beyond the limits of the current problems of an individual narrow industry, to make a systematic analysis of relevant social problems, and take a strategic approach to the future. In accordance with this, classical universities aim to improve the pedagogical process on the basis of active use of innovative approaches and information technology, subordinating them to the task of harmonious development of the personality, combining historical memory and sensitivity to everything new. This is the “classical” image of a representative of the spiritual elite. So it is not surprising that in forming a mission of classical universities, there is frequent mention of the task of training an elite, i.e. high-class specialists oriented towards leadership in their field.
The majority of technical universities quite consistently determine their innovative specifics of the contents of their education services as training personnel for priority industrial clusters. They determine the role of their graduates in the innovative economy as follows: generation of new knowledge, its preservation and dissemination, creation and transfer of new technologies and production. This is a narrower, subject determined and accordingly more structured task than the one that is faced by classical universities. Some technical universities also position themselves on the
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market of educational services as the possessors of a system for training elite specialists. At the same time, the elite nature is determined with “technocratic” precision of criteria. Thus, an according program at the Tomsk Polytechnic University includes intense language training of students, international public and professional accreditation of education programs, interaction in the education process with leading scientific research and study centers in the given field.
At the same time, we would note that in both classical and technical universities, innovation in the sphere of educational services takes part in the course of improving the system of continuous education. To the degree that educational programs reflect the material and spiritual production of innovation introduced in different spheres, these new directions will prove necessary to working specialists. So educational innovative activity is also realized in expanding the supply of different forms of professional training, and advanced training of adults. Thus, innovative actualization of university education programs is the renewal and enrichment of the contents of continuous education.
In conclusion, we would note that the scheme for realizing the possibilities of universities of different kinds that have not yet been fully realized is in many ways linked to the fact that the dissimilarity of their role in the national model of innovative development needs to be more fully taken into account. Innovative development of the country cannot be carried out at stable rates if the harmony of fundamental and applied studies is not ensured, which are also carried out by universities. Universities of different kinds, relying on their scientific potential, should become an organic part of innovative systems, taking into account the specifics of their scientific and educational activity. In its turn, this will make it possible to strengthen their role also as the main link of regional systems of continuous education, one of the most important functions of which is staffing support for the innovative economy.
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