Home > Views & Papers > Chen Qiang: Governance Capacity of Scientific & Technological Innovation Needs an Urgent Upgrade | Media Focus – Guangming Daily

Chen Qiang: Governance Capacity of Scientific & Technological Innovation Needs an Urgent Upgrade | Media Focus – Guangming Daily

Thu, Jul 30, 2020

Editor’s Note

A mass exodus of scientists and researchers from Hefei Institute of Physical Science of Chinese Academy of Sciences has drawn wide public attention. It resulted in an in-depth joint inspection by the State Council, the Ministry of Science and Technology, as well as Chinese Academy of Sciences. How should we manage scientists and researchers? How to meet the requirements of managing technological innovation under new circumstance? Chen Qiang, professor of Tongji SEM and Executive Director of Shanghai Industrial Innovation Ecosystem Research Center, shared his opinion in this article.

The importance of technological innovation becomes more and more evident in almost all fields of life, and the competition in this particular area is boiling. Major technological revolutions have happened or will happen in the fields of AI & recognition, life & health, energy & power and so on. New revolutions will deeply affect and alter the ways we humans think, work, live, interact, and they may even exert influence on how the world operates. Improving management efficiency of technological innovation, enhancing the supply of high-quality technology, stabilizing remunerations for talents in technology research, deepening the reform of technology-related policy-making, these measures are directly related to social stability and the well-being of people.

1. Six Major Trends in Scientific and Technological Innovation Management

In the Mid-Long Term

First Trend:The difficulty and complexity of science, technology, and innovation have reached an extreme level. The competition of various technologies has evolved into a systemic competition. On the macro level, we are on the verge of making a series of groundbreaking scientific discoveries or about to achieve a breakthrough in key technology development. Many fields of scientific research are entering “unexplored territories”, which requires closer and deeper collaboration among academia, industries, regional governments, and companies to achieve breakthroughs. On the mid and micro level, technological innovation becomes more tied up with the economy on a daily basis. The interactive cooperation among researchers, investors, developers, manufacturers, service providers, and executive persons becomes more frequent.

From research design, technology integration, manufacturing organization to value realization, and profit distribution, the interactions between demand and supply are given many new faces, with higher speed and blurred interface. Multiple continuously evolving ecosystems have sprung up around core products and services. Therefore, from the national level to the micro-level of product and service, technological innovation competition has exceeded the scope of individual organization or person, and it is in fact a competition between both innovation institutions and ecosystems.

Second Trend: Social innovation forces are gradually rising, and together with established technological forces, they have become the “duo heroes” of scientific and technological innovation. On the one hand, major countries in the world be optimistic for institutional scientific and technological forces such as universities, scientific research institutes, and large-scale enterprises with research and development capabilities in terms of innovation and breakthroughs, and have assigned them to “deeply cultivate” the frontier foundational fields and “debacle” in key research task.

On the other hand, with the continuous improvement and maturity of innovation infrastructure, the continuous improvement of availability, and the gradual improvement of the public’s scientific literacy, the aspirations, and energy of innovation scattered in all corners of society have been further stimulated. High-growth innovative enterprises, new research and development institutions, and the general population is becoming a new force in technological innovation.

Third Trend: The iterative development of scientific and technological innovation research paradigm is accelerating, the trend of networking, digitization, platformization, and socialization is obvious, and strategic and organized disruptive innovation is beginning to take shape. As the new generation of information infrastructure matures and R&D conditions continue to improve, R&D cooperation is gradually deepening. More ideas, knowledge, experience, data, research methods, and analysis tools can be easily shared and interacted through the Internet. Innovative models such as home-based fundamental science researchers, interdisciplinary open source technology communities, R&D crowdsourcing directed to specific scientific issues, and flexible and diverse innovation communities are constantly emerging. More and more scientific discoveries, technological inventions, and innovative ideas are beginning to be found outside the traditional scientific research system of “scientist + laboratory”. After multiple breakthroughs were achieved, the entire line of resonance was excited, which then affected the whole field of research, and finally detonated the entire system to promote the update and upgrade of the system.

In addition, as data becomes an innovative resource, the in-depth application of big data analysis technology, and the gradual maturity of computing power infrastructure represented by data centers and intelligent computing centers, based on experimental induction, model deduction, and simulation, the data-intensive scientific discovery began to become the fourth research paradigm, making strategic and organized disruptive innovation possible.

Fourth Trend: The connotation of scientific and technological innovation resources is richer, the allocation tends to be socialized and open, and the development and utilization show a trend of networking and platformization. Scientific and technological innovation resources refer to various tangible and intangible elements that serve scientific and technological innovation activities. In addition to innovative resources in the traditional categories such as human resources, capital, technology, information, facilities, equipment, management and so on, new types of resources such as data, computing capabilities, algorithm tools, patent portfolios, IP address root directories, communication channels, space satellite orbits, carbon dioxide emission quotas, gene registration, etc. have entered the resource list.

The connotation of scientific and technological innovation resources has become more abundant, and two new trends have emerged. One is that the resources become more and more abstract and tend to be invisible, and the other is that they become more and more integrated and ability-based. In terms of resource allocation, relying on the virtual organization capabilities of the network information infrastructure, scattered innovation resources and innovation capabilities can be efficiently integrated, transformed and value-upgraded.

More and more social organizations and individuals have begun to use the extremely delayering scientific research crowdsourcing platform. Participate in the “highly notable” technological innovation activities, and more popularized and diversified R&D funds will follow up more quickly and promote the commercialization of technological innovation. Various entities with limited innovation resources are constantly transcending industries, fields, regions, and even national boundaries to acquire and integrate resources on a larger scale. In terms of the development and utilization of scientific and technological innovation resources, through the establishment of cyber-physical systems, major scientific research infrastructure, large-scale equipment, and experimental instruments, scientific and technological public service platforms, and other innovative infrastructures to connect with various research networks, horizontal integration and vertical integration of scientific and technological innovation resources and end-to-end integration is realized, and the combined force of all innovation resources becomes a platform that can carry various scientific and technological innovation activities.

Fifth Trend: The uncertainty and instability of technological innovation continue to increase, and the quality and efficiency of policy-making are facing severe challenges. On the one hand, at present, scientific and technological innovation activities are intensive and active, with high uncertainty and instability in their direction, intensity, speed, and rhythm. At the same time, due to the wide range of coverage and the continuous expansion of governance, the relevant policy design and institutional arrangements for technological innovation governance often fail to keep up with the development of the industry.

On the other hand, technological breakthroughs such as artificial intelligence, gene editing, biosynthesis, and human-machine interconnection are having a severe impact on ethical codes, social order, and ecological security. Digital violence, cyberbullying, data empowerment pose new challenges to government governance. The low-cost launch of satellites will promote the completion of the construction of the stellar Internet, leading to the dysfunction of the existing regulatory system. The emergence and upgrading of “destructive knowledge” such as nuclear weapons, biochemical, and cyber viruses will directly threaten the future survival and development of humankind. This shows that the negative effects and destructiveness of technological innovation will gradually increase.

Sixth Trend: The pattern of international scientific and technological cooperation is becoming more complex, and isolationism and unilateralism tend to rise. In recent years, as China’s overall national strength and international status have increased significantly, the United States and other Western developed countries have become increasingly conflicted in their attitudes toward China’s development, and their defensive mentality has begun to gain the upper hand.

In the past two years, there have been escalating voices of doubts, accusations, and even defamation of China in the United States, and voices of “complete decoupling” from China have become increasingly popular. The global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has objectively made scientific and technological exchanges and cooperation more closed and isolated. The British Financial Times called the pandemic a “de-globalization experiment”, which also reflected part of the realistic mentality of Western society.

2. Scientific and Technological Innovation Must Meet the Requirements for

Maintaining National Security, Ensuring High-quality Development, and

Meeting the Needs of a Better Life

To cope with these trends, first, we must take precautions and prepare for the long-term blockage and shortage of technology and equipment introduction, core parts and raw material procurement, scientific research cooperation, and personnel academic exchanges. In some extremely important frontier foundations and key areas, we must make forward-looking deployments, taking advantage of the concentrated breakthrough of the “new nationwide system”, and focus on solving the “bottleneck” problems.

Second, we must boldly try to further open up to the outside world, explore the construction of an international network with enriched layers and types of cooperation, promote higher-level and more flexible international scientific and technological cooperation, and actively integrate into the overall global scientific and technological innovation governance.

The third is to turn crises into opportunities, conduct research on the new trend of interaction coupling and pattern reshaping of the innovation chain, industrial chain, capital chain, and service chain against the backdrop of the hindrance of globalization development and the rise of new regionalization. We should proactively discover new strategic opportunities and explore new ways of international cooperation in technological innovation.

For a long period in the future, the core strategic needs that must be grasped and adhered to in the management of technological innovation are mainly in three aspects: maintaining national security, ensuring high-quality development, and meeting the needs of a better life.

Maintain national security. Science and technology are not only an important area of national security, but also an important means of maintaining security in other areas. The ZTE incident in 2018 illustrates the extreme danger of relying heavily on other countries for strategic core technologies. In 2019, China’s chip imports exceeded the US$300 billion mark for the second consecutive year, and the trade deficit was as high as three times. Another example is that China has formed certain advantages in artificial intelligence data and commercial applications.

However, compared with developed countries, there is still a big gap in the field of basic algorithms. If the gap between basic research and core technologies cannot be narrowed and eliminated, it will seriously affect and restrict the development of China’s strategic emerging industries and future industries and endanger national security and sustainable development. Therefore, for a period in the future, it is necessary to strengthen the management of technological innovation, improve the supply capacity, quality and efficiency of the innovation system, and build a scientific and technological defense line for national security in all aspects.

Ensure high-quality development. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic this year, the global economy has entered a period of recession, and China’s economic growth has faced tremendous pressure. At the critical juncture of epidemic prevention and control, the supporting functions of technological innovation in the war against the pandemic was brought into full play such as providing medical robots to assist first-aid cases, to conduct remote diagnosis and treatment, to locate and diagnose suspected cases, to introduce a wide application of health codes, to launch rumor-defying platforms, and to provide computing power and algorithm support for public medical research institutions.

At the same time, new business models such as smart factories, online consumption, contactless distribution, online office, cloud education, and video conferencing have soared against the headwind, and technological innovations have begun to stimulate new momentum in the “digital economy”. However, from a global perspective, the contribution rate of scientific and technological progress of innovative countries to economic and social development is generally more than 70%, and the degree of dependence on foreign technology is generally below 30%. There is still a large gap in terms of China’s development rates. Therefore, ensuring the supply of high-quality science and technology for economic and social development will be an important task in the management of mid- and long-term technological innovation.

Meet the needs of a better life. In recent years, major countries and regions have paid close attention to the social relevance of technological innovation, focusing on reflecting the “social temperature” of technological innovation management, and meeting the real needs of improving people’s livelihood. In the fifth phase of the basic science and technology plan, Japan proposed to build “the most suitable country for innovation in the world”, creating a “super-intelligent society” that enriches people’s lives, and deepens the relationship between technological innovation and society. Germany launched the “Research and Innovation for the People-High-Tech Strategy 2025” in 2018, emphasizing that high-tech strategies should be guided by social needs and first address major contemporary social challenges. The management of scientific and technological innovation should always pay attention to people’s needs for a better life, trying to build social application scenarios corresponding to technological development, and continuously integrate the latest achievements of scientific and technological progress into all aspects closely related to people’s lives, so as to stimulate the social consensus and social response of scientific and technological innovation to the greatest extent.

The original article was published in Guangming Daily on July 30, 2020

 

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