Summary Chernysh (Институционализация государственной поддержки инноваций в России 2000-х годов кейс бизнес-инкубаторов)

National Research UniversityHigher School of EconomicsAs a manuscriptAnna ChernyshInstitutionalization of the Russian Innovation Policy in the 2000s:the case of business incubatorsThesis Summary for the purpose of obtaining PhD in Sociology HSEAcademic supervisor:Doctor of Sciences in Economic TheoryVadim V. RadaevMoscow, 20181Problem statementSupport of innovation is an important part of national policy for many countries.In post-industrial societies innovations based on scientific discoveries and newtechnologies form the base for new industries and markets, and related businesses1become one of the most profitable economic activities.

The creation of scientific andtechnical knowledge are similar processes, although there is a wide range of differencesin how exactly discoveries and inventions are transformed into innovations, i.e. goodswith high economic value added, at the national level.

The result of this transformation ishighly dependent on the institutional environment for the work of technologicalcompanies. This institutional environment is developed under the influence of historicallyestablished prerequisites, naturally emerging practices, as well as purposeful attempts toform new rules of social interaction2.The political decision to form an integral policy for supporting innovation wasmade in the early 2000s for the first time in the history of modern Russia. The main focuson this policy was on assisting technological businesses in their development.

Thisassistance covered different areas - from financial subsidies and tax benefits to changingeducational standards and the public image of entrepreneurial activity, as well as theorganization of the knowledge and skills exchange.In general, governmental support for the stimulation of commercialization ofinnovations was top-down in nature. In order to put it into practice new rules of socialinteraction needed to be created, to guide the different groups involved in the innovationcreation and commercialization processes: universities, research institutes, corporationmanagement, regional and city administrations. These rules were formed on two levels— formal and informal.

The formal level covered deliberate, but insufficientlysystematized actions of the state to develop a legislative framework for stimulating thecommercialization of innovations. The informal level covered the spontaneously1Further, it will be called a technological business or technological entrepreneurship. Companies thatoperate in this business will be called technological companies.2Further, we will denote such attempts by the term "institution formation".2emerging work practices within professional communities and public authorities involvedin the creation and support of innovations3.The focus of the agenda was on the concept of 'innovation', which can beinterpreted in a variety of different ways.

This ambiguity gave rise to some uncertainty inthe course of the new policy embedment.The Russian case of creating a state support policy for innovation can be seen asan example of institutional construction. How did it happen? How did the rules of thestate support for commercialization of innovation and development of technologicalentrepreneurship emerge and were fixed? To answer these questions, we will focus on theanalysis of institutionalization — the process of the institution creation.In this paper we consider institutionalization at the micro level using the exampleof interaction of individual actors involved in the process of the state support policy forinnovations and analyze how the rules of this sphere are formed and are reproduced inthe course of their interaction.Most often the creation of a formal organization is a result of institutionalization4,so in this paper we will reconstruct the institutionalization process by analyzing a specificcase — the emergence of business incubators5.

They have become widespread after thestart of the above-mentioned innovation policy. Within this topic, we are interested inthree questions: where the practices of support of innovation and technologyentrepreneurship came from, how they became embedded and turned into organizationalrules of business incubators, as well as how business incubators obtained legitimacy in3For the results of the incentive policy and the process of institutionalizing the rules for supportinginnovation, see, for example: Bychkova O., Chernysh A., Popova E. Dirty dances: academia-industryrelations in Russia // Triple Helix.2015.

№ 2(13). P. 1–20; Bychkova О. Innovation by coercion:Emerging institutionalization of university-industry collaborations in Russia // Social Studies of Science.2016. № 46 (4). P. 511−535.4Jepperson R. Institutions, Institutional Effects, and Institutionalization // Powell W., DiMaggio P.(eds.). The New Institutionalism in Organizational Theory. Chicago, Il.: University of Chicago Press,1991.

P. 143–163.5A business incubator is an organization that aims to support business in the early stages of development.Such organizations arise both for supporting small businesses in general, and for stimulatingtechnological entrepreneurship.3the eyes of potential users and partners. Finally, we try to create a generalized ideal-typescenario for the institutionalization of state support for innovation at the regional level.The scope of prior researchIn social science, innovation studies’ framework investigates the issues ofdevelopment and support of innovations. It originated from the works of J. Schumpeter.In the later works J.

Clark, C. Freeman, R. Nelson, L. Soete, S. Winter investigated theinfluence of innovations on economic development, both in the short and long termperspectives.The sources, resources and the general economy of industrial innovation from theposition of the firm were investigated by K. Arrow, W. Cohen, C. Freeman, D. Levinthal,K. Pavitt, J. Schmookler, D.J. Teece.B. Bellon, M. Crow, С. Freeman, B.

Lundvall, S. Metcalfe, R.R. Nelson, J. Niosi,R. Ramlogan, P. Saviotti studied the concept of the national innovation system (NIS).B. Asheim, A. Isaksen, L. Mytelka, A. Saxenian investigated regional and localinnovation systems. Their main research question is how the social environment formedon different levels (national, regional, etc.) affects the development of innovation andtechnological businesses. This issue is related closely to the problem studied in this paper.In general, the study of national, regional or local innovation systems focuses onconsidering already existing structures and their impact on the economic development ofindividual states. The vast majority of researchers work at the level of structures andinstitutions.

Such works are mostly descriptive and just state the successes or failures ofthese systems.In contrast, Henry Etzkowitz and his followers are trying to reproduce successfulscenarios for stimulating innovations and highlight the triple helix analytical model ofuniversity-industry-government relationships (Triple Helix).E. Castilla, М. Ferrary, М. Granovetter, H. Hwang, D. Markley, M. Myrzakhmet,K. McNamara, S. Radosevic focused on particular aspects of the innovation systems.They studied the impact of social networks and specialized on intermediary organizations,4such as venture funds or technology parks, as well as on supporting and developinginnovation and technological entrepreneurship, and particularly on the role of theseorganizations in innovation development and the effects of their work.Most of the works about the development of innovations in Russia analyze theinfluence of the institutional environment on the development of innovations and theconsequences of institutional construction.

These questions were studied byO. Bychkova, M. Gershman, L.Gokhberg, L. Graham, D. Ivanov, N. Ivanova, G. Kitova,D. Klevshits,T. Kuznetsova,M. Kuzyk,N. Mikhailov,E. Popova,V. Roud,V. Rudashevskij, Y. Simachev, S. Zaichenko.The research group under the leadership of Prof. O. Kharkhordin from theEuropean University at St.

Petersburg made an attempt to explain the successes andfailures of the development of technological entrepreneurship through culture.The above mentioned studies describe various socioeconomic aspects ofstimulating and producing innovation, as well as the way institutions influenceinnovation. However, they pay insufficient attention to how, and, what is especiallyimportant, why institutions that support the development of innovation and technologicalbusinesses emerge in the existing form. In this paper, we will make an attempt to considerthis aspect. Such an approach focuses on the process, rather than on the outcomes. In ouropinion, it provides more opportunities to understand the reasons underlying thesuccesses and failures of institutional reforms in the sphere of innovation development,strengths or weaknesses of national and regional innovation systems. To implement thechosen approach, we turn to the ideas of a new institutionalism in organizational theoryand economic sociology, and study social interactions at the micro level in great detail.Research goals and objectivesThe goal of this research is to describe the process of forming an institute of statesupport for innovation development at the regional level and to identify its participantsand the resources used by them through the history of the emergence of businessincubators.5The object of this research is the institutional rules of the state support for thedevelopment of innovation and technological entrepreneurship.