At the same time, expectations for the NPOs seem 

 to have cooled. Much of the initial optimism that 

 surrounded them has dissipated. As one Soviet observ- 

 er noted in the summer of 1976, "One can hardly find 

 now defenders for the view that every branch insti- 

 tute should be turned into an NPO. The opinion is 

 growing slowly but steadily that the number of NPOs 

 in industry cannot be big, perhaps three or four in 

 one ministry." "And if this is so," he continued, 

 "then it is necessary to recognize directly that the 

 NPO is a partial solution to the problem of strength- 

 ening the ties between science and production.""" V. 

 G. Shteingauz also concludes, "The NPO must be re- 

 garded as a successful but far from the only form of 

 integrating research with production. "70 The NPO is 

 still expected to play an important — and even increas- 

 ing — role in accelerating innovation and technical 

 progress, but other integrating structures will have 

 to be developed. 



In this light, the growing Soviet interest in es- 

 tablishing specialized introduction organizations 

 whose task is explicitly the implementation and dif- 

 fusion of new technology and production techniques 

 merits brief discussion. Since this function is not 

 the main job of either scientific or production or- 

 ganizations, a new type of institution is needed for 

 this purpose that is neither a research institute nor 

 an industrial enterprise, some specialists argue. 

 They see innovation — the exploitation and application 

 of new ideas and designs — as a distinct activity that 

 is fundamentally different from both research and 

 production. Hence, they maintain that new technology 

 transfer vehicles are required to perform vital but 

 neglected innovation functions. Such specialized or- 

 ganizations are depicted as the new connecting links 

 between science and industry which serve as important 

 "middlemen" facilitating and mediating the research- 

 to-production process. 71 



Attention to these new structural forms has grown 

 in part because the science-production associations 

 have proven to be more successful at creating new 

 technology than at applying it. While a few NPOs 

 conduct extensive innovation activities, they are the 



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