The gap between management and science

This post was inspired by yesterday’s condemnation of the deplorable state of new technologies in Russia. But now I would not want to discuss who, what, and when did or did not. I would like to discuss what we have now and where we can move on. After all, if you think about it, the problem now is not at all that we have few young and talented scientists. And not even that in our country there is no money. The point is the huge, bottomless abyss that has formed between science and those who are able to implement and sell its results.

Now it’s very popular to blame all problems for the crisis, but as for innovation, I personally noticed a significant increase in investor interest. The fact is that those who before the crisis were engaged in industrial production (whether concrete or metal) are now sitting with huge amounts of cash and do not know where to attach it, since their usual business has not been showing signs of life for a year now.

Continued under the cut


In addition, the constant hype in the press around nanobubes fuels interest in innovation. But the thoughts of small foundations and business angels always come down to the question: “Where can I get them?” Of course, you can talk a lot about grants and interaction with educational institutions, but this is rather the way of large companies and the state. And how the authors of the idea will meet with those who are willing to invest amounts from $ 100,000 to $ 1,000,000. Because now, it is very common to find a situation where an investor expects the author to come to him himself. And the author is waiting for someone to pay attention to his grandiose development, although no special efforts are made to this. And if Internet startups in recent times are becoming more and more heard, then the case with chemists, physicists and further on the list does not improve much.

Therefore, from the perspective of an investor representative, I would like to ask the habrasociety. If you do not take the Internet and software startups, then what do you think investors should be heading in? What initiatives should be taken? And the same thing from the standpoint of the authors of ideas. What initiatives are worth taking?

I want to understand where that intermediate point of the meeting should be. Indeed, many investors do not care what to invest in. In quasi-nano-vasilin tubes or telescope lenses. The main thing is to gain a diversified and potentially highly profitable project portfolio. And then very often the majority of applications received comes down to “creating an Internet portal of the city of N”