Mariya V. Podshivalova

The emerging global race for leadership in digital transformation escalates the critical importance of innovative IT businesses. Their viability, in turn, hinges on the availability of financing. Currently, Russia faces an acute scarcity of empirical research within this sector, thereby constraining the effectiveness of pertinent government initiatives. This paper presents the results of an empirical analysis of the financing characteristics of innovative IT companies in Russia during 2021—2024. We compiled the study’s informational base from SPARK- Interfax data, covering 1055 active software development companies that reported non-zero revenue and possessed consistently significant intangible assets. We investigated the interrelationship among the share of intangible assets in total assets, financial leverage, cost of debt, and profitability. Contrary to prevailing theoretical assumptions, substantial investments in intangible assets did not restrict access to debt financing for IT companies. We identified a consistently stable direct correlation between the share of intangible assets and financial leverage over time. We also observed heterogeneity in the financial strategies of IT companies younger than 15 years, whereas mature, highly profitable IT businesses prefer internal financing. During 2021—2024, the macroeconomic context held crucial significance for the investigated interrelationships, while state support measures exerted a certain positive influence on the industry. We conclude that, in the context of developing technological sovereignty, low-profit innovative IT companies younger than 15 years primarily require such support.

Low innovation performance despite significant potential remains a pressing issue in Russia, particularly under conditions of strong regional differentiation. At the same time, empirical evidence on how infrastructure factors influence the effectiveness of regional innovation policy remains limited. This study aims to identify constraints in innovation policy through the quality of supporting infrastructure, taking regional heterogeneity into account. The sample includes only regions that are comparable in terms of development level and policy orientation. The methodological framework is based on infrastructure analysis, where policy effectiveness is linked to the quality of resource, research and educational, human capital, financial, and regulatory infrastructure. We analyse panel data (1,870 observations) using the partial least squares method. By integrating differentiated regional analysis with an infrastructure-based approach, the study provides a novel framework for assessing innovation policy effectiveness in Russia. The results indicate that the main infrastructure constraints are concentrated in the financial, resource, and research and educational domains. We identify several statistically significant negative relationships, including the relationship between the share of business funding in R&D and technology exports, as well as between federal project funding and the share of innovative products based on Russian intellectual property. In resource infrastructure, machinery and equipment renewal appears to act as a constraining factor. In research and educational infrastructure, limitations include weak commercialization of research output and a long lag between publication activity and practical implementation. No statistically significant effect is found for human capital infrastructure. These findings can support regional authorities in Russia in adjusting innovation policy and prioritizing resource allocation. The main limitation of the study is its focus on linear relationships only.

In this article, an empirical assessment of demographic changes in Russian manufacturing industries has been carried out for the first time. We mainly focus on the analysis of business death and the structural analysis of closed firms. The empirical basis for the study was provided by data from Rosstat and the Central Bank of Russia for 2005—2023, as well as a sample of 262,719 Russian manufacturing enterprises that were liquidated between 2016 and 2022. Methods of fundamental analysis, contextual, and structural approaches were used: the study was conducted at both the macro-level and the industry and individual enterprise levels, considering business birth and death rates, proportions of active and inactive firms, and the structure of closed companies by age, closure type, and degree of activity. The calculation of a modified death rate in industry has been carried out, taking into account the closure of only those enterprises whose death causes real damage to the economy. Its value turned out to be ten times lower than the traditional Rosstat coefficient. This proves that the well-established opinion about negative trends in business demography in Russia cannot be considered objective, as the death rate has been overestimated, and the trend towards its growth in most cases is due to the exclusion of economically inactive firms from USRLE (with zero balance sheets and fly-by-night companies).

The search for new models and strategies of innovative development for specific territories is relevant today not only for many countries around the world, but also for regions of Russia. A relatively new research paradigm is the improvement of meso-level innovation policy based on a value-based approach. However, there is currently a shortage of research papers devoted to the study and systematization of the evolutionary typology of this approach, the disclosure of which will increase the effectiveness and flexibility of the innovation policy in the regions. Filling this gap has become the purpose of this study. Within the framework of the article, the following tasks have been solved: the evolution of the value approach in economics has been revealed, the factors influencing the change in the values of the innovative processes actors have been considered, and the main types of values and the mechanisms of their evolution have been highlighted. Based on the stated theoretical provisions and a critical review of the scientific literature, a systematization of the evolutionary changes in the values of the innovation policy actors has been presented: authorities, consumers, producers, investors and scientific organizations. The practical significance of the conducted research lies in the development of the author's model of the regional innovation policy based on a value-based approach. Its practical application will increase the effectiveness of mechanisms for stimulating innovation activity in the region by adjusting the functionality of key types of innovation infrastructure (financial, scientific and educational, resource, regulatory) in accordance with the emerging values of all participants in innovation processes.

The study of development challenges in the “green” economy of the Russian industry is becom-ing increasingly relevant due to three socioeconomic aspects of development: social responsibility (environmen-tal protection and public health), economic benefits (cost optimization and technological renewal), and enhanc-ing the competitiveness of domestic production (attracting investment). However, there is currently a lack of empirical research in this subject area, particularly regarding the main cause-and-effect relationships that in-fluence the implementation of environmental innovation projects in the Russian manufacturing industry. This article aims to fill this research gap. To this end, statistical methods such as descriptive time series analysis, the Dickey – Fuller test for stationarity, and the Granger causality test were employed. Initial data consisted of a sample of quantitative indicators of factors influencing eco-innovation development extent, selected based on scientific literature analysis. The time period analyzed is 2014–2023. The research results are as follows: a. A set of factors with a statistically significant impact on the volume of investments in in-novative eco-projects was identified. b. The impact of investments in eco-innovations on the intensity of waste utilization and the level of current environmental costs was identified. c. Mutual influence was found between the volume of eco-innovations and company profits, GDP energy intensity, and the development of eco-management. The results are practically significant in that they can be applied to develop mechanisms that stimulate “green” innovations in industry and assess the effectiveness of relevant government support programs.

The paper examines the need for mining companies to invest in modern digital technologies in or-der to remain competitive in the international market and to meet the increasingly stringent requirements of environmental legislation. The subject of the study is the digitalisation of the domestic mining industry, which is inevitable for its development. The main hypothesis is a moderate increase in the in-tensity and scope of digitalisation in this sector of the economy. The study aims to assess the digital trans-formation of mining companies from the perspective of the resource-based research paradigm. According to this paradigm, the authors analyse the indicators that reflect the use of financial and information re-sources, which are so important at this stage of the development of the digital economy. The authors as-sess the intensity and scale of digital transformation in mining companies using value and non-value indi-cators. The former include the cost of implementing and using digital technologies, the cost of purchasing and renting software, while the latter include the prevalence of CRM, ERP, SCM systems in the industry, the amount of software used by leading companies, the amount of software products of Russian develop-ers used in the industry, the number of advanced production technologies, and the extent of various types of new digital technologies. As far as the value indicators of digital transformation are concerned, it is concluded that there is significant growth, but it is of low quality due to stricter legislation and rising prices. The analysis of the non-value indicators shows a moderate intensity and scope of digitalisation processes in the industry. At the end of the assessment, the authors verify the hypothesis.

The study identifies external environmental factors that influence industrial enterprises’ innovation activity drawing on the example of China – the global leader in innovative development. The subject of this study is the measurement of innovation activity within the industrial sector, such as: research and development activity, the number of new product development projects and active patents for inventions, revenue from sales of new products and their exports. The selection of external success factors is based on literature review on relevant topics including: innovation infrastructure, institutions, cooperation and financing. Financing is employed as a control factor that has been repeatedly substantiated by other empirical studies. The analysis is based on official Chinese statistics (2011-2022), the Global Innovation Index sub-indices and data from the Statista platform. The time series sample is subjected to a detailed examination through descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and the calculation of an internal consistency coefficient. The Granger causality test is employed as a primary research method. The findings reveal that financing represents the most crucial element influencing the innovation activity of enterprises. The provision of startup financing and venture capital investment has been demonstrated to stimulate an increase in the number of innovative projects and new products. The study demonstrates that scientific collaboration, formation of clusters, and regulatory framework exert a considerable influence on the innovation processes of enterprises engaged in R&D. The empirical data prove that regulatory framework stimulates the number of active patents, and high patent activity in turn promotes cooperation and imports. The study thus asserts the importance of external factors, in particular financing and collaboration, which entail the success of innovation projects within the industrial sector. The findings are of significant importance for the development of new national development programmes and the adaptation of existing ones, as well as for the management of companies seeking to enhance the efficiency of their investment in innovation projects.

Over the past decade, the Russian government has reformed the national innovation system. However, there is still no research quantifying these changes. This study fills this gap by examining the devel-opment of Russia's innovative infrastructure using metrics from one of the leading innovators in the world – China. This research studies the innovation infrastructures of both countries, and the hypothesis is that there is a difference in the development of certain types of innovation infrastructure in Russia compared to China. The main methods of research are retrospective, structural, and comparative analyses. Data were collected from open sources such as Rosstat, the Global Innovation Index, World Bank, and the State Statistical Office of China. An overview the statistical indicators for Russia and China from 2010 to 2023 shows the level of development of six types of infrastructure: material, digital, scientific, educational, social, regulatory, and financial. The analysis showed that Russia lags behind China in terms of innovation infrastructure as a whole. From a structural point of view, there is also a differentiation in the development of certain types of infrastructure within Russia. The material, social, and digital infrastructures are the most developed, while the remaining elements are less developed compared to China. We believe that the main bottleneck in Rus-sian infrastructure is the lack of autonomy for innovation in private industry due to a lack of qualified scien-tists.

Aim. The presented study aims to consider the relevance of research on green innovation in industrial companies using quantitative methods.Tasks. The authors systematize major approaches to the definition of the concept of green innovation; consider the correlation between modern theories of innovation and innovative deve lopment and the concept of green innovation; analyze scientific papers on green innovation in the field of economics, management, and business.Methods. This study uses the methods of literature analysis, quantitative data analysis, comparison, and classification.Results. Approaches to the understanding of green innovation are summarized. In particular, the authors propose their own interpretation of environmental, value, technological, and ESG approaches. A logical diagram of the relationship between ESG factors and the implementation of green innovation is presented along with the authors’ definition of this phenomenon, the distinctive feature of which is that it takes into account the revealed relationship.Conclusions. Quantitative assessment methods prove the high relevance of research on green innovation in the international community. At the same time, it is indicated that this interest is just beginning to emerge in Russian science. In conclusion, recommendations are proposed for increasing the scale of green innovation in Russian industry.

Nowadays there are two perspectives on the COVID-19 pandemic: it has become a threat to sustainable economic development and the pharmaceutical industry has turned out to be its main beneficiary. The purpose of this article is to empirically verify the correctness of these statements. The data sample consists of 1771 enterprises of Russian pharmaceutical industry over a 14-year period. The methods used consisted of positioning maps and pairwise comparison of the financial indicators for 2020 with the two most severe crises in the Russian economy (2009 and 2015), as well as with the period of the most sustainable development (2007) and the legacy year (2019). In order to assess the uniformity of the pandemic impact on the industry, we identified analytical groups based on the scale of enterprises and life cycle stages. The main result is to reveal the uneven pandemic impact on the sustainable development of pharmaceutical industry producers. Small young companies were the main beneficiaries of the pandemic. The micro-enterprises in the pharmaceutical industry were the most severely affected. However, the analysis has shown that the pandemic was not the main cause of their instability. In addition, the study as a whole proves the presence of a certain stress resistance of domestic pharmaceutical producers to crises of various nature.