The role of funds as independent actors in the national innovation systems

The article analyzes the activities of the funds as independent actors in the national innovation systems. The author proposes to create the fund for supporting innovations in higher school in the Russian Federation, which should be operated as an ele- ment of the organizational-economic mechanism and thus - a system of economic stimulation of the innovation activities in higher education institutions. This gives the opportunity on the basis of rating number of a higher education institution to determine the amount of means allocated to it from its appropriate parent fund. The following main fundamental principles of the functioning of the proposed organizational structure of funds should be: a) pass-through (“top-down”) economic stimula- tion of the innovation process, suggesting that economic stimulations will be applied both at the national level (towards the higher education institutions), and at the level of higher education institutions and their structural units up to managers and employees; b) the possibility of using the part of the financial means earned by higher education institutions and their structural units for the purpose of economic stimulation of their own innovation activities. On this basis, the proposed organizational structure of funds for stimulation of innovation activities as a factor of competitiveness of higher education institutions provides that part of the financial means of the specially created federal fund for supporting innovations in higher school will be used to provide funds for stimulation of innovation activities of separate Russian higher education institutions.