| In the development of human society, talents are a very important driving force for the progress of social civilization, the well-being and happiness of the mankind, and the prosperity of the whole country. As an important source of personnel to promote the economic and social development of the society, the innovative talents become so hot that all countries are competing for them in this global developmental and revolutionary period. If a country can cultivate, gather and have good management of the innovative talents, then the country is bound to grasp the foremost resources to play a strategic-active role and achieve its goal for development in the fierce global competition."Why our schools cannot produce highly outstanding talents?" This is a widely-known question called "Question of Qian Xuesen" posed by Qian Xuesen (1911—2009), a master scientist enjoys global reputation, before he passed away. He put forward this question out of the love for the whole nation, the scientific research and the youthful talents. The in-depth connotation of this question calls for a fundamental policy to put high priority to the cultivation of the innovative talents, one policy that is quite related to the strengthening of national powers and the revitalization of the whole nation. In addition, it requires us to think over the existing prominent problems of and underlying reasons for the inadequate cultivation of the innovative talents. Moreover, it needs us to discuss and propose the corresponding measures to cultivate the innovate talents. In this dissertation, different investigation methods were employed such as empirical analysis, comprehensive analysis by comparison and literature review, etc. Based on the previous findings, this dissertation is divided into five parts to have a discussion about the cultivation of the innovative talents with the framework as follows. After putting forward the connotation and characteristics of "innovation","talent" and "innovative talent", the author had an all-round view about the outlook on innovative talents and made an objective analysis about the role that innovative talents play in the economic and social development and demonstrated the effects they bring out. Then the author made an in-depth research about the prominent problems arisen in the cultivation of innovative talents and reasons for those problems by comparing the status-quo both at home and abroad and empirical analysis. Finally, the author proposed several practical suggestions with regard to the ways and mechanisms to cultivate the innovative talents.The first part serves as the basic theoretical framework of the whole dissertation. After stating clearly about the definitions of "innovation" and "talent", the author gave a whole picture of the connotation, characteristics and categories about "innovative talent" and had a further investigation about the outlook of innovative talent under the backdrop of socialism construction with Chinese characteristics. Innovation means that the creative behaviors of subjects can promote the development of the objects. Innovation has several characteristics, that is, innovation should be based on reality; innovation should inherit traditions critically; innovation should try out new ideas and create something new. Talent is a traditional topic but it has been endowed frequently with new connotations. In ancient times, people associated "talent" with "virtue","morality","wisdom" and "ability" and the standard of measuring talent gradually changes from moral dimension to materialized one. From the definitions about "talent" by modern Chinese scholars,"talent" is mainly defined from the perspectives of individual characteristics and his or her social contribution with the focus that a "talent" should be equipped with certain knowledge, skills and creative mind so that he can contribute more to the society. After the founding of the P.R.C, especially after the reform and opening-up, the scientific outlook on talent has been gradually formed with the guidance of the socialist theory with Chinese characteristics, which means that the talents, with more-abilities and high-quality in the labor force, are those who possess professional knowledge and skills and can make contributions to the society, being the foremost resources to promote economic and social development. The innovative talents are those who have the awareness, spirit and abilities of innovation, carry out innovative labor and finally get innovative results. These talents are always altruistic and fearless, bear special individuality and extraordinary mind, have awareness of cooperation and can achieve fruitful results. The innovative talents can be categorized into different levels (primary level, intermediate level and advanced level), different areas (scientific research, engineering, management, and public administration). They can play their roles in theoretical study and practical application respectively. The outlook on innovative talent with Chinese characteristics is an important theoretical conclusion of the localization of Marxism in China and an important component of the socialist theory with Chinese characteristics. The theoretical sources of the outlook on innovative talent come from two aspects:one is the statements about the development of human beings made by the founders of Marxism, and the other is the idea of talent in ancient Chinese society. Mao Zedong did not put forward the concept of innovative talent in a clear way, but his statements about "human being" and "talent" laid a solid foundation for the outlook on innovative talent with Chinese characteristics. The second generation of the collective leadership with Deng Xiaoping as the core proposed some opinions that preliminarily established the outlook on innovative talent. These opinions included that the development of the nation called for "a group of pioneers who dare to make innovations"; the basic characteristic of innovative talents was "to be a pioneer in new fields"; follow no set from in choosing the innovative talents; create favorable environment for those talents, etc. The third generation of collective leadership with Jiang Zemin as the core put forward opinions that the innovative talents are key to the innovative development of a country; intensify the education and cultivation of innovative talents; create the atmosphere of "four-respects" so that the outlook on innovative talents with Chinese characteristics was further promoted. The fourth generation of collective leadership with Hu Jintao as the core put forward opinions that the value of cultivating innovative talents is to make the country stronger; the goal of developing those talents is to make them do favors for the society; the mission of developing those talents is to enable them to make progress for the development of the country; the characteristics of the innovative talents are equipped with "six qualities"; the management of the innovative talents should be under the guidance of the CPC, etc. With these statements, the outlook on innovative talent becomes more diversified. According to the outlook on innovative talent with Chinese characteristics, the value of talents is to satisfy the needs of others, the society and themselves through social practices and their own characteristics. The inner characteristics of the realization of the value are motility, creativity, appreciation and renewability. The development of innovative talents in a new era is mainly embodied in the following aspects:furthering the modernization of socialism, increasing the core competence of the country, facilitating the construction of an innovative nation and improving the decision-implementation capabilities of the Party.In the second part, the author made an analysis about the status-quo of the development of innovative talents in modern China in order to provide grounds for the countermeasures for the future development of innovative talents. Because of the choice made by history and our people, under the leader of CPC, we finally chose to establish a new China by revolution. But after the founding of the P.R.C, the experiences told us that revolution could not make our country become more powerful. After the Third Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Party, with the implementation of policy of respecting knowledge and talents, we finally stepped on the track of carrying out the strategy of reinvigorating China through human resource development. It is a logical turning point for the development of innovative talents from the revolution to the right strategy and now it has achieved some preliminarily good results. The quality of innovative talents has witnessed obvious improvement; the effectiveness of innovative talents has been increasingly strengthened and the system and mechanism for innovative talents have been optimized. But, as a whole, we have not transferred our advantage on population to an advantage of innovative talents. And the development of innovative talents cannot meet the demand of the development of the whole country. Still problems as following exist. First, the overall quality of innovative talents remains at a relatively low level. Second, the structural imbalance of innovative talents is very prominent. Third, the contribution rate of innovative talents is low. Fourth, the environment for the development of innovative talents calls for urgent improvement. Fifth, the overall investment in innovative talents is insufficient. These problems are due to several reasons. First, education counts. The goal for education lays an important emphasis on the acquisition of knowledge instead of the development of the overall abilities. The contents of education are too old and monotonous. The methods for teaching are not flexible. The evaluation standards are not quite reasonable. The ration between teachers and students is in imbalance and the investors mainly come from one side. Second, the management mode of centralized power counts. There is so much political interference that problems such as the schools lack the decision-making power occur. Third, we focus too much on the administrative aspect. We simply measure the social status, value and impact of the innovative talents from the perspectives of the levels of their administrative ranks and their titles. Fourth, the deficiency of rule of law counts. We are now in lack of comprehensive laws and regulations concerning the innovative talents and specified laws and regulations in this regard. Meanwhile, in the enforcement of laws, phenomenon such as power outweighing laws and the bureaucratic style become very prominent.In the third part, a systematic investigation was carried out into the development of innovative talents in developed countries from a comparative prospective, from which useful experience and inspiration were drawn. Countries like America, Japan and Korea have given full play to their advantages and taken various measures to exploit their innovative human resources, providing valuable experience and practice that we can learn from. Firstly, active strategies for innovative human resources were implemented. Focus was shifted from the exploitation of natural resources and capital accumulation to the contention for innovative talents. Relevant supporting reforms and public policies were implemented to guarantee the realization of the strategic objectives. Secondly, they continued to focus on the development of education. Innovative talents were cultivated through various ways, such as establishing a diversified educational training system, enhancing the Industry-University-Research Institution cooperation and promoting life-long education. Thirdly, innovative talents were attracted from other countries by these developed countries'strong economies, advanced scientific research conditions and favorable treatment, which was regarded as an important method to rapidly expand their innovative human resources. Fourthly, the innovative talents were reasonably employed and their talents were put to best use through innovative mechanisms, increased input and enhanced motivation. Lastly, they improved their systematic guarantee and established a thorough system favorable for the free development of innovative talents.In the fourth part, some tentative ideas about the development of innovative talents were proposed based on the realistic conditions in China. Detailed countermeasures were put forward from three perspectives-education and training, development and exploitation, and the attraction of innovative talents. From a macro point of view, the basic requirements for a strategy giving priority to the development of innovative talents are:innovative human resources should be exploited first; innovative personnel structure should be adjusted first; investment in innovative talents should be guaranteed first; personnel systems for innovative talents should be innovated first. Based on scientific and economic principles, macro planning on the development of innovative talents was made centering on this strategy. The overall scheme is:emphasis on the development of the "three teams"; strengthening the capacity building; emphasis on system innovation. Therefore, the development of innovative talents is a systematic project, which requires the establishment of a great-talent view and the exploration of new methods to develop innovative talents. Firstly, we should improve the education and training of innovative talents. Education is the basic way to provide innovative talents. On the one hand, we should intensify the educational reform in schools. On the condition of understanding and respecting the laws of education, personal growth and social development, we should lay equal emphasis on the principal part and the dominance, the laws of the market and education, scientific spirit and humanistic spirit, theory and practice. On the other hand, we should promote life-long education, the key point of which is to explore more ways for life-long education, such as opening the school resources to the public reasonably, taking full advantage of social resources and developing modern distance education. Secondly, we should emphasize on development and exploitation of innovative talents. Development-and-exploitation is a developing method ("accumulation-demonstration") for innovative talents, which is characterized by dynamism, practicality and double effect. In order to achieve scientific development and exploitation of innovative talents, we need to pay special attention to the followings. First, understand them comprehensively, i.e. their potentials and real needs. Second, build a platform for them, i.e. provide jobs and projects for the talents and let them develop and practice in work. Third, assign work after knowing their abilities, i.e. put the talents in proper positions at a proper time, according to their willing. On the one hand, we should make good use of the existing innovative talents by human-centeredness talent attraction strategy (i.e. employ the talents for a certain work but do not force them to become a formal employer in the company), outsourcing projects and results transformation. On the other hand, we should actively build "vehicles" for the attraction of innovative talents:First, use the "binding" introduction of talents, i.e. consider about essential productive factors like talents, capital and projects while introducing innovative talents, and try to introduce a project and some capital together with a talent. Second, pay attention to industry cluster. We should adapt to the clustering of essential productive factors including talents, which is caused by agglomeration economics, and develop competitive and characteristic industries to attract talents. Third, attract talents through building special zones. We should build our economic development zones and high-tech development zones into favorable niches for talents, which would then become a potent vehicle for innovative talents. Fourth, we should attract talents by talents. According to the core effect in talents cluster, we should introduce selected elites first and enlarge our innovative talents group through their relationships (e.g. teachers and students, partnership, etc.) with other talents.In the fifth part, current situation of the innovative talents system in China was analyzed and countermeasures to guarantee a sound innovative talents system were proposed. Currently, there is a shortage in the supply of innovative talents. There are both excess and vacancy in our system, which can be seen mainly in the emphasis on groups and neglect of individuals in the supply of innovative talents, lack of universality and practicality in the supply and unsound supply. The institutional transformation of innovative talents in China should target the increase of individual freedom, so that we can provide a relaxed institutional environment for the development of innovative talents. Firstly, we should make substantive provisions in the following aspects:the constitutional regulations, basic institutions and relevant laws and policies of innovative talents system. In terms of constitutional regulations, we should add freedom of thought in our constitution. In terms of basic institutions, we should adopt the educational system of "separation of management and operation" and give schools the liberty in their operation. We should establish an evaluation system which focuses on innovative achievements and accepts social achievements. We should make sure that a position is suitable for a talent and optimize our services. We should reform our household registration system, labor system and personnel system which impede the talent flow. We should perfect our market system for innovative talents and integrative social security system and improve the efficiency of innovative talents flow. We should adopt property-right encouragement and effective rewards system, laying emphasis on both the individuation of encouraged targets and the diversification of motivational patterns. In terms of laws, we should optimize our legal environment, starting with establishing a thorough legal system. We should pay equal attention to both the passage of relevant new laws and the effective enforcement of laws. Secondly, we should provide guarantee for innovative talents system from political, economic and cultural perspectives. We should confirm functions of the government, establish a rational "limited government" and adopt the multi-supply mechanism of public service. In terms of material security, we should establish a diversified input system led by the government and build a favorable niche for the development of innovative talents. We should weaken ideology, promote the integration and exchange of different cultures and strengthen public opinion guidance, so as to build a free and relaxed atmosphere for the development of innovative talents.
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