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Book Cover
E-book
Author Graham, Loren R., author.

Title Lonely ideas : can Russia compete? / Loren Graham
Published Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2013]
©2013

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Description 1 online resource (xi, 204 pages)
Contents The problem : why can't Russia, after three centuries of trying, modernize? -- What are the causes of the problem? -- Can Russia overcome its problem today? Russia's unique opportunity
Summary When have you gone into an electronics store, picked up a desirable gadget, and found that it was labeled "Made in Russia"? Probably never. Russia, despite its epic intellectual achievements in music, literature, art, and pure science, is a negligible presence in world technology. Despite its current leaders' ambitions to create a knowledge economy, Russia is economically dependent on gas and oil. In Lonely Ideas, Loren Graham investigates Russia's long history of technological invention followed by failure to commercialize and implement.<br /><br />For three centuries, Graham shows, Russia has been adept at developing technical ideas but abysmal at benefiting from them. From the seventeenth-century arms industry through twentieth-century Nobel-awarded work in lasers, Russia has failed to sustain its technological inventiveness. Graham identifies a range of conditions that nurture technological innovation: a society that values inventiveness and practicality; an economic system that provides investment opportunities; a legal system that protects intellectual property; a political system that encourages innovation and success. Graham finds Russia lacking on all counts. He explains that Russia's failure to sustain technology, and its recurrent attempts to force modernization, reflect its political and social evolution and even its resistance to democratic principles.<br /><br />But Graham points to new connections between Western companies and Russian researchers, new research institutions, a national focus on nanotechnology, and the establishment of Skolkovo, "a new technology city." Today, he argues, Russia has the best chance in its history to break its pattern of technological failure
Analysis BUSINESS/Innovation
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY/History of Technology
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Technological innovations -- Russia (Federation)
Technology and state -- Russia (Federation)
Research, Industrial -- Russia (Federation)
Industrialization -- Russia (Federation)
High technology industries -- Russia (Federation)
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Industries -- General.
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Knowledge Capital.
High technology industries
Industrialization
Research, Industrial
Technological innovations
Technology and state
Innovationsförderung
Innovationsbereitschaft
Wirtschaftsstruktur
Russia (Federation)
Russland
Sowjetunion
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781461942979
1461942977
9780262317399
0262317397
9780262317382
0262317389