Export of “brains” from Russia. Why has Russia, one of the world’s leading countries in terms of the number of inventions, been losing in the global innovation race for two hundred years?
When talking about different countries, concepts are used such as the volume and growth of GDP, the rating and the image of the country. At the same time, countries are rarely researched for their contribution to the development of scientific and technological progress of all humankind. A globally conventional image is of Russia as an authoritarian state. Russia lives off a huge raw material base, has a strong army, but a weak and non-competitive economy. This concept, unfortunately, has real grounds. Speaking about innovative companies over the past two hundred years, it is noteworthy that most of them are now located in the United States. But if one looks at this issue, not in terms of the country of registration of these companies, but in terms of the people who invented and created world-famous technological businesses, it turns out that those born and raised in the USSR and Russia are surely among the five nations that have contributed most of all to the creation of businesses that influenced human evolution.
If one considers the technological inventions that have radically changed human life on the planet over the past two hundred years, then an approximate incomplete list will be probably as follows: “Electricity, radio, television, cars, airplanes, spaceships and satellites, computers, the Internet, mobile communication and social networks.”
Here it should be noted that in the understanding of most people, the concept of “innovation” is often confused with the concept of “invention”. “Invention” means the creation of a new technical development or improvement of an old one. “Innovation” differs from “invention” in that it creates an added value and is associated with practical implementation. In this view, “innovation” is not innovation unless it is successfully implemented and starts to benefit the society.
Let us consider some of the most famous examples of inventions and innovations. For example, today few people know that the Russian engineers Pavel Yablochkov and Alexander Lodygin practically simultaneously invented and even patented the first electric light bulb (an incandescent lamp) in 1876. Unfortunately, they failed to establish mass production in Russia. Later, Lodygin moved to the United States. In 1878, Thomas Edison, the entrepreneurially-inclined American, became interested in the invention and production of light bulbs. By reducing the cost of manufacturing light bulbs, he was able to industrialize the process. The “Edison bulb” began to be mass-produced, displacing other lamps on the market. By 1890, Lodygin was forced to sell his patent to General Electric.
The idea of inventing and creating the world’s first radio receiver belongs to Alexander Popov, a Russian professor and experimenter. In 1895, at a meeting of the Russian Physico-Сhemical Society, Alexander Popov demonstrated “a device designed to indicate rapid fluctuations in atmospheric electricity”, in other words, a radio receiver, and he performed the first radio communication session.
Later, with the help of leading British manufacturers, Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian, managed to carry out radio communication over a distance of 3,500 kilometers. In 1897, Marconi registered a patent and established his own company, putting the invention on a commercial basis, not achieved by Popov.
Speaking about television, the first patent for electronic television technology was obtained by Boris Rosing, Professor at the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, who applied for a patent for the “Method of electrical transmission of images” in 1907. He succeeded in transmitting an image at a distance in the form of a grid of four light bars on a dark background in 1911. It was the first television program in the world.
A real breakthrough in the development of television was the iconoscope, invented in the United States in 1931 by Vladimir Zvorykin, a Russian emigrant and a student of Boris Rosing, who worked at that time at the Radio Corporation of America.
As for Aircraft Construction, there are a large number of inventors in different countries who have made a significant contribution to the creation of a modern aircraft. There are also many Russian names among them, such as Alexander Mozhaisky, Alexander Kudashev, Igor Sikorsky, Nikolai Zhukovsky, Andrey Tupolev, Sergey Ilyushin, Pavel Sukhoi, Oleg Antonov and others.
At the same time, back in 1904, the Russian scientist Nikolai Zhukovsky, who can be considered the “father of aerodynamics”, formulated a theorem that quantifies the lift component of an aircraft wing which is the basis of the aircraft construction.
Today, Igor Sikorsky is especially famous in the world as a Russian aircraft designer who moved to the United States after the October Revolution. He is the developer of the world’s first four-engined aircraft “Russian Knight” (1913), a heavy four-engined bomber and the passenger aircraft “Ilya Muromets” (1914), as well as the serial famous helicopter (USA, 1942).
The date of the beginning of space exploration is considered to be 1957, when the Soviet Union was the first to launch the spacecraft Sputnik-1 into space as part of its space program. On this day, the spherical satellite entered the orbit, transmitting back the signal of a successful launch and fixing the Russian word “Sputnik” forever in all languages of the world. Unfortunately, today, Russia accounts for less than 5% of the world telecommunication market, which actively uses space satellites.
As for advanced information technologies, it is no secret that behind such well-known and globally popular companies as Google, Skype, WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, Parallels, ABBYY, EPAM Systems, Luxoft and others are the founders who were born in the USSR. As of today, the headquarters most of these companies are located in the United States.
Evident from the above facts, for two centuries, most inventors in Russia have not been able to arrange the commercial use of their inventions in their homeland. Russia has always been leading in the number and quality of the most important inventions for humankind, but it has clearly lost out to many developed countries in terms of their practical implementation in the economy. Why?
In my opinion, the main reason has been and still is in the lack of the necessary socio-economic environment for the implementation of innovations. The most important components of such an environment are political stability in the country, a fair judicial system that protects intellectual property and investment, financial, administrative and moral support for the creative part of the intellectual society. Also, the presence of various and competing facilities for the market financing of scientific and technical developments, and, most importantly, the attitude to science as the main engine of economic development and, accordingly, a tool for making money are mandatory for innovation growth.
Unfortunately, almost all of these major components of the socio-economic environment are still not developed in Russia at present, which will affect the further export of technological inventions. Loren Graham, Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology noted that: “Russia will not be able to get enough milk unless it creates ideal conditions for a cow. Any inventions will not be of great practical importance until the necessary environment is created for the implementation and commercialization of innovations”.
A long-term concentration on the raw material sectors of the Russian economy, combined with the strengthening of state capitalism held Russia back. The lack of judicial protection for inventors and businessmen, the lack of market financing for the development and implementation of innovations, as well as the pressure on a creative part of the population, year by year, push Russia away from the countries in which an innovative economy is growing, and which are ready to adopt and support with great pleasure, talented scientists, inventors and businessmen unrecognized in Russia.
It is frustrating that Russia, which is one of the top 5 countries in the world in terms of the number of inventions that are most important for humankind, has been consistently, for two hundred years, losing out to its main competitors in the innovation race, and over the past 30 years, to many so-called “third world countries” which until recently have not got any fundamental science at all.
In the total volume of export trade of civil science-intensive products on the world market, Russia’s share is estimated at 0.3 %, while the share of the United States is 39%, Japan is 30%, Germany is 15%, and China is 6 %. These figures are very important because, according to most economists, including Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, innovation is the only real source of the wealth-growth in the modern world as a whole.
Given a relatively low level of taxation, a high level of general volume of education of the population, the number of talented Russian inventors, the unique base of fundamental science that is still preserved since the Soviet period, especially in such subjects as mathematics, physics, chemistry, IT, biotechnology, space and nuclear technologies, it is safe to assume that Russia could be capable of returning to the top five most innovative economies in the world. Russia could radically change its image, becoming an attractive country for domestic and foreign inventors and investors instead of continuing to export “brains” to other countries!
Covid-19 may have changed the world, but major conditions of innovation growth remain valid. This situation opens new opportunities for entrepreneurial activities worldwide. In the nearest ten years we will see if Russia is able to return to the club of the most innovative countries or lag even further behind its competitors.
Konstantin Dzhimbinov PhD.
Senior Partner RB Partners, M&A and VC advisory firm
www.dzhimbinovkd@rbpartners.ru
August 2020
