Project: Self-fashioning practices of successful technological entrepreneurs and their influence on the efficiency of high tech companies: the cases of Russia, Finland, South Korea and Taiwan. The project is run with the support of RUSNANO in between September 2011 and March 2013.
Problem formulation and research question
Why are some societies able to make a modernization leap, whereas others remain outside the global technology race despite all the efforts made by their political and administrative elites? The majority of experts will say that these are political and institutional barriers that prevent a society from a successful modernization. However, history of the 20th century shows that the technology modernization is equally possible outside the liberal model. The examples are numerous: Shintoistic Japan and the Soviet Union under the Stalin rule, Park Chung-hee's South Korea and Deng Xiaoping's China. It is clear that in all these cases some special (not liberal) techniques of technology modernization were used, which were grounded on the local cultural and institutional peculiarities. In Japan, South Korea and partly in China it was the turn towards the norms of business behaviour rooted into the national traditions, the forms of collaborative efforts and respective moral values that became some sort of “a modernization springboard” for the East Asian countries that helped to make a breakthrough in the national high-tech industries. In other words, the development of high-technology economy does not always mean westernization.
Research question: what role-playing models, culturally accepted self-actualization mechanisms and strategies for succeeding are spread among the Russian technology entrepreneurs and how do they differ from the similar models, mechanisms and strategies of their “western” and “eastern” counterparts?
The study focuses on the cross-cultural, trans-regional reconstruction of the social “portrait” of a technology entrepreneur. The project will result in the typology, “portrait gallery” of technology entrepreneurs who correspond to the different, locally specific knowledge economies.
Project's geography: cross-cultural research design presupposes the study of the innovation systems of four Russian regions (St. Petersburg, Kazan', Novosibirsk, Tomsk) and three technologically advanced countries (South Korea, Taiwan and Finland).
Участники проекта:
Анна Артюшина, ЕУСПб, исследователь
Ольга Бычкова, ЕУСПб, исследователь
Пяйви Кархунен, Университет А.Аалто (Финляндия), исследователь
Александра Масальская, ЕУСПб, исследователь
Евгения Попова, Томский государственный университет, исследователь
Денис Самсонов, МАЭ РАН, исследователь
Елена Симакова, Университет Экзетера (Великобритания), консультант проекта
Кирилл Солонин, СПбГУ, Университет Фогуан (Тайвань), исследователь
Анна Черныш, ЕУСПб, исследователь
Жанна Цинман, ЕУСПб, администратор проекта