Overcoming internal and external barriers for companies’ innovation development

Abstract

The increased internal and external challenges of recent years became a stress test for Russian innovative businesses. In order to assess firms’ adaptive capacity, and ability to continue innovation in times of crisis, an approach is proposed based on identifying and structuring the attitudes and expectations of the business community in the changing business environment. 47 factors were taken into account, broken down into 8 groups: markets, competitive environment, materials and equipment, human and financial resources, infrastructure quality, government regulation, and social environment. The data was collected through a specialised survey of 1,121 top managers of high-tech manufacturing and service firms conducted in January-March, 2022.

The results show that companies’ perception of framework conditions for innovation, and of business environment faults is weakly correlated with their industries, but strongly related to the innovation behaviour patterns. Non-innovative firms are the most pessimistic in their assessments. The key barriers to innovation are related to the quality of government regulation, and the availability of external financing. The results obtained expand the understanding of companies’ adaptation to external constraints, and allowed to suggest certain innovation policy recommendations.