ABSTRACT

This chapter explores spiritual and moral aspects of the development of innovative thinking in the business community as factors in the establishment of an innovation-based economy in Russia. The Russian spiritual tradition, given its orientation toward the spirituality of the individual, can serve as the spiritual basis for the development of innovative thinking in Russia. The market economies that formed in the West are an incarnation of Western European humanism, distinguished by its innovative thinking. Western European humanistic thinking in economics was innovative in that it placed primary emphasis on economic liberty. The communal economic system conceived of by the Slavophiles is simply the manifestation of religious solidarity in the economic realm. The co-presence of society with the individual in the economic sphere meant that the private good of each individual—that is, economic freedom—is accepted by society as a public good.