Keywords

1 Introduction

In accordance with the USA approach, in a narrow sense, an innovative system is considered as a scientific and technological system including, above all, institutes generating new knowledge. The European school envisages not only production but also dissemination, acquisition, and application of knowledge through the processes of training between economic subjects, experiments, and improvement of technologies and products during their usage. It is proposed to conduct the research of the NIS in dynamics as a process of transformation step by step of one complex of institutes to another one or as a process of radical institutional changes.

The aim of building an innovation system is connected with its function to provide the economic growth of the country by production of knowledge.

Innovative system is an open system that is closely connected with other several systems such as production system, financial system, labor market, or system of industrial relations and dependent on their positive effect. The main objective of the innovative system is to make a contribution to increment the growth of the economy by production of knowledge that is especially useful for modernization and renovation of the system of production, products, services, and processes. The capability of the innovative system to implement its own modernizing function also depends on the positive effects of its environment such as the system of education, science, legislation, and culture. It can be concluded that for correct analysis of innovative system we should understand it as an open system closely connected with several other systems.

The interdependence of the NIS elements supposes the following: private sector develops technologies based on own researches and masters innovations. A government provides support for production of fundamental knowledge and strategic technologies and takes part in building of infrastructure and favorable institutional conditions for innovative activities of private companies.

2 Latest Research and Publication Analysis

Analysis of Latest Publications

The concepts of innovative systems arose in the west in the 1980s and actively were developed in the 1990s of the last century by such scientists as Freeman (1987), Freeman and Soete (1990), Metcalfe (1995), Lundvall (1992, 2000), Lundvall et al. (2006), Kaukonen and Nieminen (2000), Nelson (1993), and Patel and Pavitt (1994).

Goal of Research

The analysis of the publications has demonstrated the existence of various definitions of the NIS proving that up to now there is no unified point of view on the essence, structure, and functions of the NIS, which, to a largely extent, is determined by national peculiarities. The goal of this research is to reveal tendencies in building the national innovative system, stages, and specific features, conduct comparative analysis of innovative activity, and identify the issues and ways of its development in Kazakhstan.

Object of the Research

The object of the research is the tendencies of development of national innovative system, as an object of the research, the organizational, economic, and administrative communications and the relations arising in development of national innovative system in modern conditions of globalization act.

Methods for the Research

In the course of research and the analysis of information methods of the comparative, logical analysis, a method of generalization and system approach was applied.

Key Research Findings

The NIS national peculiarities are connected with the role of the government and private sector and large and small business in production of knowledge, proportion of fundamental and applied researches and development works, dynamics of development, and industry-specific structure of innovative activities.

In Kazakhstan, the innovative system has built two stages. During the first stage (2003–2009), the law “on state support of innovation activities,” the first strategy of industrial and innovative development up to 2015, and programs for building national innovative system of the Republic of Kazakhstan for 2005–2015 have been developed, and technology parks, first experimental design bureaus, and parks of innovation technologies have been created.

During the second stage (2010–2014), legal framework has been further formed; infrastructure programs and mechanisms have been developed, and first significant results have been obtained. Years 2015–2019 will be the third stage of the NIS development in Kazakhstan (Seitkassimov et al. 2015; Ivanova et al. 2006; State Program of Forced Industrial and Innovative Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan 2010; Yegemberdieva et al. 2012).

Among peculiarities of building the NIS in Kazakhstan, it is worthy to note that due to feudality of development and agrarian specification Kazakhstan rather did not have the basis for creation of innovations. And Kazakhstan has to build newly the innovative system. There are also pluses: there is no need to adopt an old infrastructure. During the last period, a new institutional structure of the NIS has been built.

The NIS structure of Kazakhstan includes development institutions, design bureaus, technological parks, and special economic zones.

According to the efficiency analysis of Kazakhstan, innovative system conducted based on the data provided by the Committee for Statistics of the Ministry of National Economy of the Republic of Kazakhstan, currently, there are eight regional technological parks in the oblasts with total area coverage of 87.3% including share of innovative companies of 50% (National Science Report 2014).

The government’s interest is shown in the maximization of economic effect of innovation activities and necessity for arrangement of monitoring the innovative process based on the principles of system, interaction, and building feedback with subjects of these activities.

State support of domestic science is carried out by increasing of expenditures for formation of the innovative system’s elements. They have been increased from 1.9 up to 66.4 billion tenge from the state budget for 2000–2014 (see Table 1) (Science and Innovative Activities of Kazakhstan 2010–2014 2015).

Table 1 Key indicators of the science status and development
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During the recent years, share of the expenditures for science has been 0.17% of the country’s GDP, while share of the expenditures should be 1–1.5% of the GDP for developing countries as recommended by the International Academic Council. In Russia, this indicator is 1.3% of the national GDP; in China, 1.4%; in Germany, 2.5%; in the USA, 3.8%; and in Japan, 3.3%. Unfortunately, Kazakhstan comes short in this indicator not only to developed countries but also to some developing ones. Researches have noted that Kazakhstan is still at the fourth technological mode which indicates low science effectiveness in Kazakhstan and its weak relations with real economy.

According to Table 2, effectiveness of researches and development works was growing from 2010 to 2013, and in 2014, reduction is observed by the number of applications submitted and copyright documents issued.

Table 2 Effectiveness of R&D
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Important indicators of innovative activities by OECD assessment are number of publications and their citation. According to country rating by the number of publications in Web of Science base for 2010–2014, Kazakhstan is at the 94th place (2523) against the first place of the USA (2,763,847); the number of publications per 1 mln persons is 157 (Table 3).

Table 3 Dynamics of research activity of Kazakhstan compared with other countriesa, units
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Share of scientific publications of Kazakhstani researchers in the world is only 0.02%, while the USA has 22%; China, 10.2%; Japan, 6.1%; and Russia about 2% (Science and Innovative Activities of Kazakhstan 2010–2014 2015). Based on the data of the Committee for Statistics of the Ministry of National Economy of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the number of innovatively active enterprises increased in 2014 by 3.4 times compared to 2010 in Kazakhstan (Table 4).

Table 4 Key indicators of innovative activities
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According to the National Science Report (National Science Report 2014), 4878 R&D was implemented in 2013. The most part of which was registered by the following industries: economics (8.6%); medicine (6.7%); agriculture, forestry, and education (by 6.6%); law sciences (5.6%); and chemical technology (5.1%) (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
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Share of innovational products

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The number of enterprises with product and process innovations grew by 2.8 times for 2010–2015. Innovative products were manufactured to the amount of 4 million dollars of the USA. And share of products newly implemented or significantly technologically modified was more than 91%.

3 Findings and Perspectives of Further Researches: Conclusions

Kazakhstan as an established state at a new stage of own development in terms of global challenges of the twenty-first century is needed in cardinal renewal of the driving force of development based on implementation of new massive industrialization. Neo-industrialization shall become the key content of modern industrial policy oriented at rate of growth, a scale-up of social and economic development of the country at the cost of increase of labor efficiency based on innovations.

However, the NIS of Kazakhstan still has a number of weaknesses, the main of which are the following:

  • Low level of financing of science with ineffective control for the resources allocated due to the lack of coordination of industry-specific authorized and innovative organizations

  • Lack of legal framework regulating relations of science, education, and manufacturing

  • Low share of private sector in science development

4 Recommendations

Based on the experience of many world countries, Kazakhstan has defined the vision and plan of further actions related to innovations in the concept of innovative development up to 2020. Under this concept, it is supposed to promote generation of innovations in Kazakhstan, provide further development of leading innovative clusters, develop perspective technological directions, strengthen regional innovative systems, provide use of raw potential of the country to attract newest technologies, and create high-tech productions.

Neo-industrialization in Kazakhstan shall provide combination of own scientific and technical resources and external technology sources. In this regard, it is useful to use the experience of China, India, Brazil, and others that skillfully use possibilities provided by globalization of technological development by implementation of the strategy for regional transfer and inclusion in global technological chains (National Innovative System and State Innovative Policy of the Russian Federation 2009; Dnishev and Alzhanova 2013).

It is also necessary to create the following to solve the tasks of innovative development of the country’s economy:

  • System of financing that encourages real benefits from inputs and more efficient interaction between two sectors—science an real economy

  • Powerful science and technological complex in scientific researches and technologies in priority areas

  • Development of institutional structure

In general, formation of the NIS is a crucial stage of building a national economy which is based on acquisition and use of new knowledge. This concept combines the key elements of scientific, creative, and innovative activities of the country. Thus, the NIS enables to look at the process of building an economy of a new type systematically and, in particular, at changes of the principles of human resources management.