THE ASSESSMENT OF THE KNOWLEDGE SPILLOVER EFFECT BASED ON THE ANALYSIS OF PUBLICATION ACTIVITY: REGIONAL ASPECT

Abstract

The problem of knowledge spillover and its role in the development of the national and regional innovation system is of significant interest, since in the modern global world the advantages are obtained by those innovative systems that are able to both generate knowledge and use knowledge external to them. The flexibility of regional innovation systems to disseminate knowledge enables them to be more effective. In general, knowledge is considered to be implicit and explicit. Both explicit and implicit knowledge have the potential to influence the emergence of new ideas and their design in the form of innovations. Codified knowledge (for example, patent citations) has a significantly larger distribution area compared to non-codified knowledge. Implicit knowledge, for which the direct contact of the knowledge carrier and its “recipient” is important, can also play an important role in the dissemination of knowledge and innovation in clusters, i.e. have an even more limited distribution area. In this regard, the question arises about the mechanisms of codification of knowledge, methods of research directions of their distribution and intensity of knowledge spillover. Such codification may be based primarily on patents and publications. The above mentioned determines the aim of the study, which novelty concerns the development of a methodological approach to assessing the publication activity of scientists of research institutes of the corporate sector as a method of studying the regional specificity of the spillover effects of knowledge. As a result of approbation of the author's approach Russian regions have been classified on intensity and orientation of codification of knowledge basis. Regions with high values of publication activity of scientists of research institutes of corporate sector and significant external codification of knowledge when publications are carried out jointly with foreign scientists or scientists from other organizations have been determined. It has been proved that the higher the level of external-oriented codification, the greater the potential for spillover effects of knowledge in the regional economic system. To assess the prospects for the application of knowledge in the innovation process on the basis of comparing the results of the typologization of regions and the map of clusters in Russia, the hypothesis about the positive impact of clusters on the dissemination of knowledge has been verified. At the same time, it has been shown that for the majority of subjects of the Russian Federation there is a low publication activity, in the process of which knowledge is codified, which indicates insignificant spillover effects of knowledge and a low level of development of regional innovation systems in general. Prospects for the development of this problem are associated with the assessment of the effectiveness of the use of external knowledge in regional innovation systems, as well as with proposals to improve the efficiency of its dissemination. An important task is to justify the necessary minimum level of inter-firm codification of knowledge through publications based on the experience of innovative regions-world leaders.