State University and Russian Academy of Sciences as contributors to the innovative restructuring of Moscow

Both University and Academy of Sciences have traditionally been important economic actors of the Russian capital city, although their research activity was covered mostly from the federal budget. Links with Moscow city authorities have been regulated ‘from the top’ (Communist party directives etc.) and channelled within focused research programs, hardly financed extra to stable budget salaries. At the present stage, when more and more financial mechanisms are involved, their links with Moscow Government are based on initiative from the bottom and look rather like a survival strategy than as a real motivated innovative activity. Academy seems to be more successful in establishing network of contract research for the city: in 1993– 95 out of 83 proposals 55 have been financed through the cooperation program ‘Academy to Moscow, Moscow to the Academy’ (most of them in the field of environment, industry, transport, cultural heritage and healthcare). Out of 159 university proposals only 9 were selected and none really financed. In reality links between scientists and Moscow government are much more intensive than officially registered due to their participation in expert commissions, consultancies and research contracts, developed on the basis of informal networks. University science park is a special case-study in this paper, providing an example of a successful innovative activity in Moscow. The main barriers for the use of innovative potential of the main Russian fundamental science centres in Moscow are 1) the lack of economic innovative policy by the city authorities, 2) weakly developed mechanisms of bringing the results of fundamental research into practice, 3) rising taxes, other intermediate charges and bureaucratic obstacles, making any kind of research activity for the benefit of Moscow economically disadvantageous, 4) low synergy effect of technologically innovative research, 5) conservatism of a big part of the personnel (especially in the University) and negative attitude to any kind of commercial activity in ‘cathedrals of science’. Nevertheless, there are evident signs that the role of Academy and University in creation of innovative millieu in Moscow is growing, both as producing new knowledge and labour force training, and as centres of direct enterpreneurial activity (see Castells and Hall 1994).