Integration of business, education and science at the regional level for implementing the national technological initiative

Current world affairs show that the post-industrial stage of development of all mature world powers’ economies is followed by creation of a new development paradigm, which is based on the economy of knowledge, science achievements, innovations, global information and communication systems, and which leads to innovative economy formation. In the context of the national innovation economy formation in the Russian Federation, prerequisites are created for integrating the efforts of business, science and education representatives to develop, produce and market high-tech products which have significant economic or social potential. And this is not only the task announced by the Russian government, but also a natural process in the country’s economy, which contributes to the increase in the integration participants’ efficiency. The result of such integrated interaction of education, science and business consists in a synergistic effect through formation of an interactive cooperation model that involves the active use of combined knowledge, ideas, technologies and other resources during innovative projects implementation. At the same time, integration processes are diverse, complex and occur in each case taking into account the integrating parties’ activity specifics. Within this framework, the goal of the research is to characterize the impact of the education, science and business integration process, on the national technological initiative implementation in the country on the whole and to study the integrating experience of these entities at the regional level. In the course of the research, the stages of the Russian national innovation economy formation process have been studied; the role of education, science and business in the National Technological Initiative implementation has been characterized; it’s been proved that educational institutions are the key link in the integration process in the chain “education - science - business”; the experience of education, science and business integration in the regions of Russia has been studied. As a result of the research, the authors emphasize the necessity of preferring soft forms of education, science and business integration at the regional level, as they allow to preserve the flexibility of integrated structures and also to make necessary adjustments to the membership and implemented innovative projects in order to solve the pressing tasks of National Technological Initiative.