volved in moving ideas from the laboratory into use, 

 along with greater appreciation of the importance of 

 effective coupling throughout the process. Nonethe- 

 less, understanding of the innovation cycle remains 

 incomplete. Many questions still lack adequate an- 

 swers; some important issues have not yet even been 

 raised in the literature. 



At the same time, practice continues to lag appre- 

 ciably behind perception. Just as in modern technol- 

 ogical hardware, so also in modern software the im- 

 plementation and diffusion of innovations in R&D 

 planning and management remains a critical problem. 

 Indeed, the ongoing science policy debate is replete 

 with complaints that progress in introducing reforms 

 is slow. Brezhnev observed at the 1976 congress, "The 

 improvement of planning, the restructuring of the 

 economic mechanism, and the policy of intensifying 

 production proceeded slower than planned." He par- 

 ticularly lamented, "Despite the fact that this ques- 

 tion was raised repeatedly and insistently, the ap- 

 plication of S&T achievements is still a bottleneck 

 in many branches. "°^ Even more outspoken is L. A. 

 Vaag of the State Committee for Science and Technol- 

 ogy, who told the national round table on S&T prog- 

 ress in the fall of 1975, "Five years have passed and 

 there have been no major changes. "°1 



Though the Kremlin's new strategy for science and 

 technology stresses the need for a total systems out- 

 look and approach to remedy the problems of incom- 

 plete planning and disjointed administration of R&D, 

 reforms themselves have been adopted in a piecemeal, 

 experimental, and incremental fashion. Despite some 

 steady gains made in the 1970s, a great gap persists 

 between the aspirations of Soviet authorities for 

 comprehensive and coherent S&T policies and their 

 abilities to implement these wishes. In short, the 

 Kremlin's reach still exceeds its grasp in this pol- 

 icy sphere. 



The two systems for guiding S&T progress still 

 prevail, and opinions continue to differ over how to 



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