Priorities for future innovation: Russian S&T Foresight 2030

Abstract

Under the transition to a market economy Russian science, technology and innovation (STI) has changed dramatically. After the crisis of late 1990s, the government declared science and technology (S&T) as one of national priorities and started increasingly investing in this sector but it has not led to the tangible output like a bigger volume of high-tech exports or a higher share of international publications. A number of policy instruments have been introduced to increase the efficiency of STI policies. One of them is S&T Foresight.The activities aimed at identification of national S&T priorities and series of Foresight studies have helped to understand which areas are most promising for sustaining existing competitive advantages and building new ones via gradual shift from the resource-based economy towards the technology-oriented one.The paper presents the design and organisation of a large-scale Russian S&T Foresight exercise as a fully-fledged instrument of the national STI policy and discusses the achieved results and their use for policies at different levels.