Strategic European Integration Scenarios of Ukrainian and Polish Research, Education and Innovation Spaces

Abstract

A comprehensive study was conducted in the direction of research and institutional support and comparison with the nearest neighbour - Poland, to determine the current state and justify strategic scenarios for Ukraine's integration into the research, educational and innovation spaces of the EU as a source of proactive sustainable innovative development. Analysis of the use of foresight technology to determine the possible future, create the desired image of the future and determine strategies to achieve it using methods developed in various research areas revealed that its application makes sense in determining long-term factors, trends and directions of national economies. That is, in foresighting, in contrast to forecasting, the emphasis is made on qualitative rather than quantitative results, which does not provide the expected targeted policy of the state, because it does not give clear, concrete results of actions - quantitative strategic benchmarks, monitoring which would control the process of these areas' development. The disadvantages of foresighting methods that limit its application are identified. Scientific substantiation of strategic scenarios of European integration of Ukrainian and Polish research, education and innovation spaces is based on the concept of sustainable development, which is grounded on applied systems theory, management theory and economic cybernetics and comprises the stages of identifying and strategizing. Identification is carried out taking into account the definition of the safe existence boundaries and simultaneous norming and integrated convolution of indicators and thresholds of education and innovation. Comparison on one scale of integrated indices of education and innovation makes it possible to carry out the goal-setting stage, identify possible strategic development scenarios and build the desired development trajectories, i.e., to implement the principle of strategizing "the future is determined by the trajectory into future." Thus, knowledge of the desired values of integrated indices in each year makes it possible, through their decomposition by the method of adaptive regulation from the management theory, to justify the values of indicators that provide the desired growth trajectory and achieve certain goals of research, educational and innovative spaces of Ukraine and Poland.