Interaction of Russian business with science: Points of contact and stumbling blocks

The paper assesses the influence of science–business cooperation on the activity of firms, analyzes the factors of interaction of Russian companies with academic organizations and universities in the research sphere, identifies barriers to the development of cooperation between business and science. It has been established that companies whose source of innovation was external R&D were more likely to grow over the past 5 years and to create new products. However, a significant effect of the impact of cooperation with domestic research organizations was found only for the dynamics of exports. It is shown that cooperation with domestic science is more typical for high-tech industries and large Russian businesses. The factor inducing firms to outsource research is a significant level of competition. The high cost of external research services and their insufficient quality hinder the development of scientific and production cooperation. One can point to such a barrier as low interest of research organizations in the volume of orders that firms can offer. This is caused by weak institutional change in the Russian science, preservation of its orientation at the state and major players, which significantly limits the opportunities for institutional interaction of small innovative firms with science. It has been shown that the state quite effectively “pushes” companies to interact with research organizations and universities, but the results of such interaction are often unsatisfactory for firms.