The innovative potential of mining engineers in the conditions of increasing the competitiveness of the Russian coal industry at the beginning of the XXI century

The subject of the authors' research is the innovative potential of mining engineers in the context of improving the competitiveness of the Russian coal industry at the beginning of the XXI century. The «fresh» character of the period under review determined the dominance of industry literature in the analysis of materials. The purpose of the article is to characterize the innovative potential of Russian mining engineers at the beginning of the XXI century. The use of the comparative historical method showed that Russian mining engineers at the time under consideration were under the influence of both the “Soviet” and liberal market factors of innovative development. The use of the problem-chronological method showed that the dynamics of innovation in the coal industry had a heterogeneous nature, which in many respects repeated the all-Russian one. The authors highlight the main stages in the development of the innovative potential of mining engineers and their features. The first stage (2000-2006) is characterized by positive dynamics, when a new institutional and regulatory framework for innovations was formed. At the second stage (2007-2010), when there was a reformatting of the directions and content of innovations in the coal industry, a course was taken for the digitalization of management and production processes. The third stage (2011 -2020) stands out for the ambiguous results of the development of the intellectual and innovative potential of mining engineers in the context of intensification of the digital transformation of the industry. A number of successes in one area coexisted with the growth of external and internal threats to this process. This is directly indicated by the deepening crisis in the field of domestic coal engineering. The analysis of the materials carried out by the authors allows us to assert that the favorable price environment of the world energy resources market, which dominated during the period under consideration, has significantly reduced the role of innovation as a priority factor in production improvement and economic activity. The final conclusion is that at the beginning of the XXI century the mechanism for the formation and implementation of the innovative potential of Russian mining engineers found itself in a situation of a protracted transition from the Soviet model to the liberal market. Russia continued to lose its position as one of the trendsetters of innovative solutions in world coal production, which had persisted since Soviet times. At the same time, business and the state failed to create a new, highly effective mechanism for the formation and implementation of the competitive innovative potential of Russian mining engineers. The weakest link between them, in our opinion, was higher mining education, which found itself in a difficult situation due to cardinal and sometimes erroneous reforms. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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