Innovation Potential of the Arctic Regions of Russia

The paper provides a comparative analysis of foreign and Russian methodologies for assessing innovation potential. It is shown that foreign methodologies cannot be used to determine the innovation potential of the Arctic regions of Russia due to specific indicators that are not calculated by Russian statistics. It is determined that the use of Russian methodologies for an objective assessment of the Arctic regions in terms of innovation potential is difficult. In this regard, the authors developed a comprehensive methodology for assessing innovation potential, the principal novelty of which consists, firstly, in the use of specific indicators (in other methods, the authors use not specific, but absolute statistical indicators); secondly, only indicators that characterize innovation development are used; thirdly, expert research methods are excluded. According to the results of the analysis of statistical data, it is determined that the Arctic regions have low rates of innovation development and lag behind the average Russian values. Based on the proposed methodology, the innovation potential was calculated and the Russian regions were ranked for ten years, including 2011, 2013, 2017 and 2020, in order to compare the dynamics of the Arctic regions. It is shown that the Arctic regions are characterized by rather low values of innovation potential and are mostly below 50th place in the ranking of Russian regions.