Innovations and innovative development: a socio-philosophical approach (through the example of engineers of Tomsk Polytechnic University in the field of Smart Systems)

In this article the author presents the analysis of the concepts of innovation and innovative development in the context of socio-philosophical problems. Philosophers' attempts to understand innovation and innovative development are reasoned by the fact that these concepts express processes which nowadays play the role of factors which provide dynamic development of leading countries. The representatives of economics, management and information technologies sciences managed to succeed in the research of the phenomena. Russian philosophers joined this research later. One of the features of the socio-philosophical approach is uncertainty in definitions when orienting at the social aspect of innovations and innovative development. In this regard the author engages in controversy with V.G. Fedotova, A.V. Goryunov and others on the issue of understanding the nature of innovations. According to the above mentioned authors innovations may be divided into the following types: social and technological. The technological type derives from the social type and represents a special case of it. The author is trying to explain and prove that innovation is a universal phenomenon which does not differ by the field (social, technological, etc.). In the author's opinion, innovation may have various results of its implementation (social, technological, etc.). There are types of innovations the results of which may be more substantial in the context of one social life activity, rather than in the context of another, but this fact does not mean that innovation in this case will be only of social or technological nature. It means that innovation has at least two components mentioned in this article. These components are economic-technological and socio-humanitarian. In order to obtain effective results from innovation implementation it is necessary to combine all of the above mentioned components of innovative development. If the imbalance between the above mentioned components of innovations occurs, then one of these components is presented in the economic sector more fully than another component with all repercussions for the government that permitted its occurrence. In the Russian Federation innovative development is imbalanced in favor of the economic-technological component in relation to the socio-humanitarian one. In order to demonstrate this statement the author analyzes various ratings of innovative development and the educational experience of Tomsk Polytechnic University in the field of Smart Systems. The experience of Tomsk Polytechnic University demonstrates that the economic-technological part of innovative development substantially prevails over socio-humanitarian not only in research, but also in the very nature of educational training of engineers. The elimination of this imbalance is the most important step in the innovative development of our country.

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