Emerging R&D and technology sources: a Russian perspective on the internationalisation of manufacturing technology

Citation

Trifilova, A. (2010), "Emerging R&D and technology sources: a Russian perspective on the internationalisation of manufacturing technology", Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, Vol. 21 No. 8. https://doi.org/10.1108/jmtm.2010.06821haa.002

Emerging R&D and technology sources: a Russian perspective on the internationalisation of manufacturing technology

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, Volume 21, Issue 8

About the Guest Editor

Anna TrifilovaHead of the Management and Marketing Department in Nizhny Novgorod Architecture and Civil Engineering State University, Russia. Her areas of research interest are international technology collaboration, managing for innovation in the global context, and Russian R&D organisations in the global market. She published two books: The Analysis of Innovation Development (2005) and The Management of Innovation Development (2003) in the Russian language. Her third book is in the English language The Future of Innovation (2009) co-edited with Dr Bettina von Stamm. This is not just a book but also a web site www.thefutureofinnovation.org and a wiki project on what the future of innovation to be – which already joined around 400 contributors from over 50 countries of diverse back grounds: business, government, consulting, and academia. Anna runs a section “International Kaleidoscope” in the Russian Journal Innovations. She is a member of Scientific Panel of The International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM) and a member of the International Advisory Board of the International Association for Management of Technology (IAMOT).

“International technology collaboration”, “open innovation”, “emerging R&D sources”, and other frequently used ways of describing the internationalisation of technology and R&D are not new notions in the study of innovation. In fact, an emerging trend seen in many countries is a greater use of partnerships, collaborations, and outsourcing as substitutes for in-house R&D. Indeed, the ability to exploit external knowledge is a decisive component of contemporary innovation. General motivations for internationalising R&D and technology include a gateway to scientific talent and international division of labour (Nobel and Birkinshaw, 1998), modifications of companies’ existing products to better fit local market needs as well as collection and analysing of direct feedback from customers and technical support for local production (Gunasekaran, 1998), knowledge sharing and higher innovation performance (Spences, 2003), quick entry into new technological fields (Belderbos, 2003), keeping pace with technological development in the host country and cooperation with foreign R&D labs (Dalton et al., 1999), to name just a few.

Despite these ideas, however, the genuine globalisation of technology and R&D has yet to be widely implemented and integrated into manufacturing technology. This is evidenced by the Russian experience which is reported upon in this special section of the Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management (JMTM). The aim is to provide a glimpse from inside Russia of the way in which the types of global networks which have previously been reported upon in the JMTM (Zhang et al., 2008) do not always capture the complexities associated with the globalisation of technology and R&D. The papers taken as a whole illustrate that, despite the fact that contemporary Russia possesses world-class science and technology capabilities which were developed with extensive state resources under the Soviet system, these capabilities have not always been exploited on the world stage and converted into successful innovations. A vivid illustration comes from a 2005 trade mission to Russia to develop research in the area of microwave power by the UK’s DTI (2005). Reporting upon the results of the visit, participants of the mission concluded that Russia maintains a significant capability in the design and manufacture of high power microwave devices and systems; the country retains a desire and ability to initiate innovative projects and that there are many opportunities for co-operation.

The first paper “Green technology and eco-innovation: seven case-studies from a Russian manufacturing context” provides an introduction to some of the ideas contained in JMTM’s small-scale expedition into Russian manufacturing technologies. The research described in this paper has two objectives: first to explore how green technologies are developed into successful eco-innovations in Russia, second – to understand why despite the world-class basic research capacity described above, Russia’s exports still consist primarily of raw materials rather than the types of green technologies reported in the study sample cases.

The second paper “Targeted drug delivery to ischemic heart with use of nanoparticulate carriers: concepts, pitfalls and perspectives” describes the way in which Russian research into nano-sized particles for use in the pharmaceutical industry might offer new means of delivering drugs to patients. It describes how the technology of aptamer synthesis can be easily scaled to industrial production, facilitating the rapid advancement of aptamers from the bench to clinical applications. Additionally, as the authors claim, the results of the research might even contribute to the development of new manufacturing technologies in the pharmaceutical industry.

The next paper continues with the theme of nano-technology. Entitled “New separation materials based on gold nanoparticles”, it reports on the use of newly developed techniques in analytical chemistry for chromatographical separation of organic compounds. It reports new knowledge about the properties of gold in the nanosize region and the bonding which occurs at the nanocluster’s surfaces with potential manufacturing advantages such as simple sorbent synthesis, usage of commercially available precursors, stability, and repeatability in separation.

The final paper, “Physiological research of efficiency of biologically safe bacterial fertilizers”, describes a new environmentally pure system of bacterial preparation that might be used to manufacture safe agricultural products of high quality, increasing yields, and treating seeds prior to planting with the view to stimulate germination, enhance resistance to hypothermia and fungus-induced diseases and to improve plant growth and development.

The collection of papers presented in this special section demonstrates that innovations which have developed from the rich legacy of Russian expertise in science and technology have not always been fully capitalised upon or integrated within global networks. Part of the reason may be explained by Watkins (2003) who argues that, in order to convert this expertise into global innovations, Russian organisations have to overcome a long “legacy of institutional arrangements inherited from the past system”. However, there is also another side to the argument, as outlined by Bolko (2004, p. 40) who writes that highly industrialised countries feel more comfortable as:

[…] proud givers of our own products than as curious takers of foreign ideas […] the path from inside out is still dominant. The richness of content of the opposite path, from outside in, is still underdeveloped. We are ready to import “low cost” but to a lesser degree “foreign ideas”.

Sengupta et al. (2006) define globalisation as the opening up of new geographic markets in the second half of the twentieth century in some countries that were previously inaccessible. This special section in JMTM aims to make some small contribution to the study of accessibility to Russian R&D organisations and their potential capabilities, as well as to inspire further research in the area. As the co-founder of GEN3 Partners, a science-based R&D services company established in Boston, USA, and St Petersburg, Russia to specialise in product-innovation comments:

Workforces in certain parts of the world have a comparative advantage at doing particular things over workers in other regions. My company GEN3, for example, has several hundred scientists and engineers in St. Petersburg, Russia, who are involved in product innovation work. Why are we there? Because Russia boasts superior science in several fields – the USA does not have a monopoly on this. Microsoft, General Electric and AIG, too, have all gone offshore for search and development capabilities (Powell, 2005, p. 23).

Without further ado and leaving the readers now judge for themselves, we are pleased to present to you the four papers comprising our illustration of Russia as a potential emerging R&D co-operator in manufacturing technologies.

Acknowledgements

The Guest Editor would like to thank David Bennett, General Editor of Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, for allowing her the opportunity to edit this special section of the journal and she especially thanks the Russian Journal Innovations and its Editor-in-Chief Boris Novikov for giving a helping hand and cooperation with this project. The Guest Editor is grateful to Ian Hipkin, from the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Pau, France, for his encouragement and support.

Anna TrifilovaGuest Editor