Risk and Independence in Innovative Activity

Scientific-technological progress is characterized by a complex of technical and economic parameters that inhere in both capitalism and socialism. The identification of these parameters, which has always been of interest to Soviet economic practice, acquires special significance in the light of chronic difficulties in the industrial assimilation of the results of the scientific-technological revolution in the USSR, the unsuccessful results of prolonged experimentation in the search for adequate economic and organizational forms of coupling science and production. This should be seen against the background of the expansion of the range of areas of scientific-technological progress in which our lag behind the main capitalist countries becomes not only obvious but strategically menacing as well.