What do you think are the most and least successful examples of innovation-oriented policies in the world?
The term “innovation” has many meanings; it needs to be clarified. The Federal State Statistics Service differentiates between advanced production technologies that are new for Russia and those that are totally new. Totally new means ones that have been developed for the first time and have no substitutes anywhere in the world. And new technologies for Russia mean ones that have been essentially borrowed from other nations. In 2007, Russia borrowed for the first time 653 advanced technologies, and developed a mere 75 totally new ones.
If your objective is not to amaze the world but to improve performance and therefore living standards, you can opt for borrowing rather than developing new technologies. Moreover, if a country lags behind in technology, it usually finds it much cheaper to borrow. Advanced nations, on the other hand, are limited in their choices of borrowing; they are forced to develop totally new solutions.
