Analysis of the Specifics of Effectiveness in High-Tech Companies

High-tech sector is recognized as an important long-term priority for the development of any economy; therefore, purposeful support and encouraging the development of this sector requires highlighting the specificities of high-tech and knowledge-intensive companies. This study provides an empirical test of the existence of differences in some parameters between the companies in high-tech and traditional sectors of the economy with BEEPS microeconomic data base by the following characteristics: level of research and development intensity; level of personnel qualification; technological and financial capabilities; business orientation to the global market. The test is based on the Student’s t-test, i.e. statistical comparison of the average values of the parameters for the companies in the specified sectors. For verification, the data from direct surveys of domestic manufacturing and production service companies, the data from the surveys of companies from the EAEU countries and some Eastern European countries were used. It has been revealed that in Eastern European countries, high-tech companies of any sectors more heavily invest in R & D. In Russia, this is true only for the production sector. At the same time, the level of innovative activity for domestic production companies is generally consistent with the level of the companies in other countries under study. Like in many European companies, a significantly large proportion of domestic high-tech companies pays attention to the introduction of new methods f production, management, and product promotion. The need to acquire or rent equipment is equally important for high-tech and low-tech companies, and there are no significant differences in access to financial resources. It has been also revealed that the Russian high-tech production companies are more focused on the national market, whereas the low-tech companies are orientated to the local one. At the same time, the high-tech business is still characterized by a higher share of products shipped for export as compared to the average level of industrial exports.