S&T Priority Setting. International Practices and the Case of Russia

Abstract

The paper discusses practices of science and technology priority setting with respect to national and global challenges. General approaches to priority setting with particular focus on types of priorities, selection criteria, methodologies and formal procedures are illustrated on international experience (for Germany and the UK). Recent developments and problems to be resolved in S&T priority setting are analysed in detail for the case of Russia. The solutions suggested target ensuring practical applicability, objectivity, and transparency of priority setting procedures and results.

Measuring technological level of organisations: methodological approaches and assessment

“…Recommendations, standards and analytical materials of international organisations n statistical manuals for the STI sphere published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Eurostat (including the Oslo Manual (OECD, 2005(OECD, , 2015; Frascati Manual (OECD, 2015); Handbook on Economic Globalisation Indicators (Balcet, 2005); TBP Manual (OECD, 1990) and Patent Manual (Schmoch et al, 1994); European Statistical System Committee, 2011), by the United Nations Institute of statistics (UNESCO, 1984(UNESCO, , 2010 by the World Intellectual Property Organisation [Glossary on Industrial Property Statistics, (WIPO), 2012] and the European Commission, which serve as a methodological basis for calculating and analysing the Composite Innovation Index and the European Innovation Scoreboard (Hollanders and Tarantola, 2011;European Commission, 2014a, 2014b; n reports and reviews of leading international economic organisations containing policy evaluation in the innovation and technology area, focusing in particular on the quantitative and qualitative tools (OECD, 1998;Warwick and Nolan, 2014;UNESCO, 2015); n materials and reviews published by relevant industry-level international organisations and analytical centres concerned with assessment of current state and prospects of industry-specific markets (DePasquale and Bradford, 2013;Bryant et al, 2016;Economist Intelligence Unit, 2015); n methodologies developed by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) for assessing and rating the largest transnational corporations/TNCs (UN, 2007); n approaches to assessing companies' competitiveness suggested by the World Economic Forum/WEF (Schwab and Sala-i-Martin, 2016); n methodologies for developing and assessing the impact of priority Science & Tecnology (S&T) development areas in the EU, in the scope of the 8 th Research Framework Programme (FP8) "Horizon 2020" continues along the path charted by FP7 towards integration of European research. FP8 designed to promote overall economic growth, increase the competitiveness of European economies by encouraging investments in knowledge, innovation and human capital; FP8 was aimed at supporting joint EU member states ' and associated countries' projects in 2008-2020(see, for example, European Commission, 2014cGrebenyuk et al, 2016); the EU launches two enormous projects, so-called Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Flagships in major S&T ar...…”