Freedom of Creation for Culture, Business, Innovation

Abstract

The article raises a range of issues concerning innovations and their contribution to the development of
 modern society and presents the author’s stance in the debate on the importance of freedom of creation for
 the development of culture and innovations, as well as the role of innovation policy in the development of
 various aspects of creative activity in Russia. Innovations are defined as new developments or pioneering
 work that are applicable, valuable for the consumer, obviously productive and utilitarian, and commercially
 feasible. The author emphasizes that the major essence of innovations lies in their exclusiveness, orientation
 on and commitment to future market development, as, in the author’s view, it is the only approach to
 defining innovation that spares national economies the also-ran status by enhancing their competitiveness
 in the global goods and services market. The author gives special focus to the role of higher education in
 the process of knowledge production and innovations, stressing the need for a reappraisal of values and a
 shift of emphasis – from the degree run-of-the-mill towards knowledge production and innovations. The
 article dwells on the current philosophical perspective on innovations as an individual’s isolated actions,
 processes and an activity outcome, rather than an individual’s immanent need and the ends and means
 of life. The author pays special attention to innovations in the humanities, whose in-demand rating in the
 spheres of public production and consumption is frequently higher than that of innovations in technology
 and engineering. In this regard, the author emphases the role of culture, which, along with science, serves
 as a foundation for innovative and creative components of the economy of knowledge (or, the new economy)