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This paper aims to describe and discuss the architecture of Russia’s Technology Foresight System (TFS). This paper introduces the reader to the integration of the TFS into the public administration system and, specifically, into the national strategic planning system.

To do so, the authors fall back on more than 10 years of experience in performing foresight exercises for Russian policy makers of their institution.

Thereby, the paper highlights the implications arising from the interaction between sectoral and national components of TFS and on application of the results of foresight studies (implemented within the framework of TFS) for the strategic planning.

Russia has a long history of technological planning and forecasting and engages regularly in extensive foresight activities of both national and sectoral relevance. Also, Russia’s leadership repeatedly stresses the importance of such foresight activities which are outlined by a national law since 2014.

Sectoral foresight activities often identify technological opportunities but leave the question open who will pursue them. Entrepreneurial activities have become increasingly important for the introduction and commercialization of new technological solutions. The same is true for Russia’s oil and gas industry, which requires a major technological upscaling to stay competitive. Promising start-ups, however, often face high barriers and fail to commercialize superior technological solutions. The purpose of this study is to show how industry-specific entry barriers can hamper start-up activities.

This paper discusses the experiences of a Russian oilfield service start-up in commercializing a self-developed technology for increasing the productivity of oil wells.

The start-up faced conservatism from corporate decision-makers, declining oil prices and suboptimal protection of intellectual property rights. The company overcame most barriers through moving into other markets outside of Russia, as closing a deal with customers in the USA and Canada went much faster than the extended business cycles of national oil companies.

This paper connects sectoral foresight activities to the real-life experience of a start-up. The findings suggest that entry barriers need to be addressed by the planning process to really pave the way for a greater impact of entrepreneurial activity.

When a major Russian energy provider introduced a new technology that required organisational adjustment, the company’s management was surprised by the degree of internal resistance these changes provoked. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The authors took reference to the work on readiness to change and studied how the future time perspective, which connects with early writings by Lewin (1942), would explain the attitudes and behaviour of 148 managers.

The findings indicate that only a small number of employees perceived the future as offering many opportunities and showed willingness to pursue them. The majority of employees are either fearful of future changes, or do not have a strong sense of belonging to the company and hence are disinterested in prospective opportunities within the firm.

The different constructs of the future introduce an emic perspective to the study of organisational change and answer calls to enrich the measurements that are currently in use.

This paper aims to report on a design intervention at the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) control room which resulted from a user-centred design approach intended to raise its usability.

Adapting a user-centred design approach, the observations and interviews revealed a number of weaknesses of the current control room design.

While most suggestions would require larger restructuring, the designers intervened with simple solutions resulting in the improved handling of many pieces of hardware. This study suggests that such design interventions hold the possibility to majorly improve the efficiency of the control room and thereby raise the potential outcome of such highly capital intense installations.

Thereby, this paper has immediate relevance to the astronomical field and the corresponding advancements in electronics, engineering and technology development.

Given the immense gains in productivity in agriculture and mining over the last decades, the purpose of this paper is to study knowledge transfer from Research and Technology Organizations (RTOs) into primary sector producers. The authors inquire which of these RTOs are successfully competing for public funding, and how these funds are used. Also, the authors study what makes an RTO more (financially) successful in technology transfer than their peers and which RTOs transferred technology that was new to the Russian market.

This research is based on 62 RTOs which reported technology transfer to enterprises with main economic activities classified by NACE rev 1 as “A – agriculture, hunting and forestry” and “B – fishing” and “C – mining and quarrying,” including oil and gas extraction.

The authors found remarkable differences between the Russian RTOs and their OECD peers, but also differences between agriculture and mining. Interestingly, competitive funding plays a different role in both industries. In agriculture, a more conservative funding paradigm prevails, and competitive funding is less important and more reliance on classical annually revolving funds is given. Competitive funding here is more used to strengthen basic R&D and to generate patentable knowledge, while in mining, these funds support technology transfer.

This is, to the knowledge, the first detailed study on Russian RTOs servicing her primary sector. The authors believe that studying these RTOs is of great value as RTOs are broadly under-researched and various scholars have called for more fine-grained analyses to better understand their role in the innovation system.

Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) were designed to determine the exact location of objects on land, water and air for military purposes. With the opening of the satellite signal for civilian use, the technology created business opportunities for various applications. Today, satellite positioning technology is used by transporters, carriers, motorists, surveyors, builders, foresters, etc. through a wide array of devices like mobile phones or multimedia devices with built-in receiver modules.

This paper provides the results of a recently held foresight exercise on the future development of Russia’s GLONASS system.

The foresight exercise suggested a number niche markets where the GLONASS technology could be of great use, like monitoring of buildings and construction sides or the monitoring of shipments. In addition, in the case of Russia, large-scale government-driven investment programs will be key drivers for GLONASS’ growth perspectives.

The paper provides a comprehensive picture of the development of GNSS for civilian use until 2020.