New Foresight: Effective Solutions in Challenging Areas

In the latest issue of ‘Foresight’ (2015, Vol. 9, No 2) consideration is given to the long-term prospects of the market of hybrid cars and nuclear energy, development of entrepreneurship, and the factors behind people's willingness to engage in continuing education; new tools to assess the quality of research are also proposed.

Marisela Rodriguez and Francisco Paredes use patent analysis to uncover the current status and prospects in the hybrid car industry in their article, ‘Technological Landscape and Collaborations in Hybrid Vehicles Industry’. The greatest amount of patenting activity is being carried out by companies in areas such as electric traction drive and special control systems. Corporate research is focusing on parallel engine types, as well as the use of hydrogen and solar energy.

What is the situation regarding competency development and advanced training in human resources? In her article ‘The Role of Companies in Human Capital Accumulation: Cross-Country Analysis’, Natalia Bondarenko assesses the involvement of employees at Russian companies in continuing education and the role of employers in this process, comparing them with practices in the European Union and the OECD. Unlike Europeans, Russians do not view continuing education as an urgent need, which seriously reduces companies’ innovation potential. In terms of willingness to engage in advanced training, there is a serious gap between managers and employees. The article proposes compensatory mechanisms for corporate and state management that are designed to address this imbalance.

In ‘From Research Project to Research Portfolio: Meeting Scale and Complexity’, Jonathan Linton and Nicholas Vonortas pay attention to the drawbacks inherent in the traditional system of expert review of research. A priority criterion for the allocation of funding is usually the scientific level of individual projects, which on the one hand leads to their inadvertent duplication, and on the other hand to the emergence of unwanted gaps. The authors offer new tools for more accurate assessment of factors affecting the results of scientific research. This makes it possible to eliminate ‘inconsistencies’ in the scope of individual studies, significantly improve the efficiency of research infrastructure, and identify opportunities for further development.

Alexander Chepurenko analyzes the current state of research on entrepreneurship. A comprehensive redefinition of the objectives in the field that is reoriented toward the study of social, institutional and other types of entrepreneurship will contribute to sustainable development in this direction.

In analyzing the prospects for nuclear power, tools based on evaluating the dispersion of forecasts take on particular relevance. The article 'Long-term Stochastic Forecasting of the Nuclear Energy Global Market' (authors — Vladimir Kharitonov, Ulyana Kurelchuk and Sergey Masterov) offers a method for forecasting global nuclear energy market performance for the period up to 2035. This method allows for generation of probability distributions so that various actors in the global nuclear energy market can effectively evaluate long-term economic risks.

The issue concludes with a review of the ‘Science and Innovation’ session held at the XVI April Conference at HSE. The participants discussed the factors of competition and cooperation among states in the field of science and technology, new approaches to generating forecasts for Russia’s scientific and technological development, and the results of Foresight research in select priority sectors.

In Moscow, this issue of ‘Foresight’ can be purchased at BukVyshka (HSE’s bookstore), which is located at 20 Myasnitskaya Ulitsa. In Perm, it can be found at the Piotrovsky store (51A Ulitsa Lunacharsky). Paper and electronic versions of the magazine are also distributed through subscription.

Foresight editorial staff