Innovation activity of small and medium-sized enterprises as a condition for improving the efficiency of the regional economy

Abstract

The small and medium-sized enterprise sector accounts for around 21,7% of the gross domestic product of Russia and about 40% of employment, yet its contribution to the innovation performance of the economy lags behind its quantitative weight and is highly unevenly distributed across the country. The discrepancy between the scale of the sector and its innovation output at the regional level remains theoretically unresolved: the literature simultaneously holds the interpretation of the innovation activity of small and medium-sized enterprises as an independent driver of regional efficiency and the opposing view of a weak and heterogeneous link between them. The aim of the work is a quantitative assessment of the contribution of the innovation activity of small and medium-sized enterprises to the increment of regional economic efficiency and the determination of its place among the factors of this increment. The calculation is performed by the chain substitution method on a model array of five regional clusters for the period 2019-2025 with the involvement of official macro indicators of Rosstat and the Bank of Russia. It is established that the innovation activity coefficient provides about 43% of the increment in the gross value added of the innovation-active segment, ahead of the contribution of productivity (about 37%) and the number of employees (about 20%). The elasticity of productivity with respect to the level of innovation activity in the inter-cluster comparison amounted to 0.38 with a coefficient of determination of 0.61, and the dispersion of the link is concentrated in the cluster with leading costs and lagging output. The lead of the innovation activity factor over the other factors means that an increase in regional economic efficiency is achieved primarily through a qualitative restructuring of the operations of small and medium-sized enterprises, whereas an extensive increase in their number and employment yields a limited effect.