For several years now, businesses in our country have been trying to offer various support programs: these funds are expected to help build factories and accelerate the modernization of production. However, it is too early to talk about a breakthrough in import substitution, systematic introduction of innovations, real development of production. Most private design firms, industrial and technology start-ups fail to get adequate funding and bring their innovations to market. There are usually several reasons.
The overwhelming majority of customers of innovative “import-substituted” products in the Russian Federation traditionally want to receive their order right now, at a low price, and even on credit. At the same time, sometimes what the customer wants either does not yet exist in the form of serial products and technologies, or it is available only in an imported version. With such short time and tight financial requirements, suppliers, as a rule, are forced to either take a suitable imported product and localize it as if it were made here, or do express development of a working prototype layout in a few months to demonstrate to the customer as a pre-series or even serial sample. . As a result, no real import substitution occurs: at best, the customer receives a certain sample or a limited batch of products that do not provide the declared characteristics. They then have to be elaborated for a long time and thoroughly.
If we are talking about the development of such a complex system as a power plant, then in a short time it will not be possible to create a really working and tested pre-series sample from scratch. If you do it by upgrading an existing serial product, of course, you can meet it in a short time. “Innovative swindle” is becoming more and more obvious; real mechanisms and conditions for overcoming the problem have not yet been created. Nevertheless, the process of understanding the problem at all levels, albeit slowly, is underway.
As for state support and stimulation of high-tech investments, this is still being done in a very original and selective manner, which leads to a phenomenally low performance against the backdrop of an unprecedented PR around innovations in the media. At the same time, it is much easier and more profitable for banks to engage in virtual speculation and lending to companies than to create long-term investment funds in the high-tech sector. Private investors remain, but their investment sentiment is negatively affected by the deteriorating economic situation. All this leads to the fact that the planning horizon of most investors does not exceed 1 year. In these conditions, the developers of innovative products can only be patient and slowly continue to develop their innovations and know-how at their own expense.
However, if in St. Petersburg, with the participation of the authorities, financial institutions and private investors, it is possible to create a mechanism for building new production chains for each complex product or system, and these new chains include innovative companies with unique competencies, then our city with its scientific, technical and industrial potential will become the main innovation center of the Russian Federation.
