To ride out the crisis, we need…“geniuses”

A group of Lviv Polytechnic National University academics (Senior Research Associate Anatolii Pedan, Doctor of Economics Natalia Chukhrai, and Ph.D. seeker Myroslava Hnatiuk) has mapped out and put forward the project of an institute of invention. It is supposed to be an interdisciplinary institution to which talented university freshmen will be selected on the basis of certain tests. These tests have been drawn up by the Gifted Child Institute of Ukraine’s Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. The Institute of Invention’s curriculum was jointly drawn up by the university’s Institute of Economics and Management, Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Institute of Jurisprudence and Psychology. It is planned to deliver lectures on futurology, emotional intellect, business planning, project management, etc. There will be joint “physicist + lyricist” classes for engineering and humanities students. This will enable them to broaden their horizons and be more confident in their views. More details about the academics’ concept can be found on the website of Lviv Polytechnic’s scientific and technological library in the article “Institute of Invention as a Source for Funding the University’s Research and Innovations.”

Comfortable conditions for every student to realize their intellectual potential make it possible to bring up an idea to the level of an invention. The invention is patented under the Ukrainian law and becomes an object of intellectual property (OIP), i.e., a commodity which can and must be sold. Who to? Unfortunately, there is almost no demand in Ukraine. Meanwhile, there is a host of specialized organizations in the world, which look for and buy scientific inventions in all fields. The only thing to be done is to establish beneficial businesslike contacts with them. An uninterrupted flow of OIP will result in an uninterrupted financial flow. The institute will be not only a powerful research and invention center, but also a no less powerful financial entity that will take part in funding Lviv Polytechnic National University.

An international competition, Microsoft Imagine Cup, was held recently in Sydney. Overall 350 students from 75 (!) countries reached the final. Four students at the Donetsk branch of the “Step” Computer Academy emerged victorious. They manufactured their invention in the kitchen of a five-storey tenement. Let me recall the words of the artist Ivan Marchuk, “a 20th-century genius,” who lived in many countries: “In no other country of the world are so many talented people born per square kilometer as in Ukraine.” This automatically raises a rhetorical question: why then are we so poor? Because no one needs the overwhelming majority of these talents.

All we have to do is catch and rally together these talents, create comfortable conditions for them, and promote the maximum realization of their talents.

Let us imagine that Ukraine’s statesmen will understand the necessity to support science and this kind of institutes will be established in Kharkiv, Odesa, and Kyiv. Covering the entire Ukraine with a network of their branches, they will turn it into one of the world’s influential research centers. A pipe dream?

The Institute of Invention will deal with the following matters:

– it will enable young talents to realize themselves here in Ukraine, without having to go abroad, which will stem the brain drain;

– it will gradually become financially self-sufficient and independent from the state budget;

– it will help form a new economic sector – the invention economy;

– the increment of individual human capital will increase the state’s intellectual potential and competitiveness;

– in the long run, these institutes and their analogues will speed up the formation of the national scientific, technological, and humanitarian elite as a guarantee of its future.

If carried out, this project will help put into practice what the Lviv mayor firmly declared back in 2011: “The strategic goal of Lviv is to emerge as one of Europe’s regional capitals, a center of educational and informational technologies in Eastern Europe, a place where innovational products are born and implemented. And it is not just empty words or dreams.”

The Lviv academics’ concept received support from Lilia Hrynevych, chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee for Science and Education. For it is a banal truth: economic development directly depends on the development of science, on the state’s attitude to it, and, above all, on funding. As the world is switching to a new setup in the 21st century, ideas and scientific projects are the most sought-after commodity. In the very near future, the power of a state, its place and clout in the world, will be measured not by the tons of smelted metal or the quantity of machines and equipment but by the number of scientists and inventors per 1,000 residents.

To meet international standards, it is necessary to spend at least three percent of GDP on scientific research. If it is less, science is doomed to extinction.

In 2010 Ukraine spent 0.43 percent of its GDP on this, which was, of course, the lowest figure among the European countries. Sadly enough, this indicator fell to 0.3 percent in 2013 and to 0.25 percent in 2014. It is the level of underdeveloped African countries. There are heaps of unpublished and perishing monographs and other research works which may contain ground-breaking discoveries. The state is cash-strapped. Purchasing up-to-date equipment is out of the question if there are no foreign grants. Much to our regret, experts note that the parliamentary coalition agreement calls for abrupt cuts in the funding of the so-called unpromising scientific research. Incidentally, the US NASA has a special institute that collects and even finances crazy ideas – just in case.

This contempt for science has resulted in an all-time low increment (0.7 percent) of GDP at the expense of new technologies. In the developed countries, this indicator varies between 60 and 90 percent. The economy, at least its industrial sector, is degrading with science. The share of the marketed innovational products in the overall industrial output has been steadily shrinking: 7 percent in 2002, 4.8 in 2009, and 3.8 in 2011. Accordingly, the number of those working in the innovational spheres has dropped 3.3 times in the past 20 years. In the same period, their number has more than doubled in the US and Western Europe and quadrupled in South-East Asia.

The policies of our government are only speeding up further degradation of scientific research. Yes, we are in a war. But science, education, and culture are the backbone of the rear. You won’t win a modern-day war without science. Science is the foundation of a country’s defense capability, and no reforms are possible without science.