Formation of leadership strategies of companies as a factor in the rise of regional economies

The development of the regions of the Russian Federation currently takes place in difficult conditions of strong external pressure from Western countries, rising inflation, personnel shortages, an objective need for accelerated growth in defense and social spending, and instability of global financial and resource markets. Under these conditions, in order to ensure economic growth and social progress, it is necessary to make maximum use of the strategic internal reserves for regional development, especially those that have been underused to date and contain large reserves. The article contains the author’s interpretation of strategic leadership as the ability of a company’s management to ensure higher levels of competitiveness and strategic sustainability in the long term than those of its leading competitors based on their outperformance in key parameters: implementation of new scientific methods of strategic development management; involvement of personnel in generating innovative development processes and creating self-learning organizations; levels of investment in innovation, implementation and modernization of new technologies and achievements, automation of production and digitalization of the management environment, personnel development and growth of human capital; quality of work on continuous improvement of internal structures, production, labor and business processes. The authors conducted an analysis of a group of companies producing leading railway rolling stock based on the ratio of the average volume of investment in innovation and development to the average volume of revenue in 2014-2022, which allowed them to identify a stable relationship between global leadership and the relative share of company expenses on innovation. The study examined the problem of raising regional economies based on activating the most important long-term internal development resources and made a number of proposals for developing strategic leadership of enterprises.