Infrastructure potential of regional innovation ecosystem: models and assessment methods

The infrastructural potential of regional innovation ecosystem is becoming a determining factor of economic growth and spatial technological development in the conditions of fierce interregional competition both within a country and at the international level. The implementation of smart regional specialization strategies, aimed at increasing the innovation susceptibility of territories, reducing innovation resistance, overcoming the rut effect, increasing the spatial absorption capacity of territories in the field of innovation, actualizes the task of finding optimal methodological tools for assessing the infrastructural potential of innovation ecosystems. The purpose of the study is to systematize theoretical models and methodological approaches to assessing the infrastructural potential of regional innovation ecosystem, identify issues, and determine the directions for improving the methodologies. The review of the methodologies for assessing the infrastructural potential has revealed their significant diversity: the results-based approach, considering transaction costs, the analysis of production functions and correlations, integral indices, the matrix method, and specialized indicators of digital transformation. Of particular value is the ecosystem paradigm, which considers the innovation infrastructure as an open system of interdependent agents that jointly generate, disseminate, and commercialize innovations on the basis of smart specialization. The key issues of modern methods have been identified: terminological ambiguity, abstractness, poor practical testing, insufficient consideration of integral effects, and qualitative characteristics of the infrastructural potential of regional innovation ecosystems. Promising directions for improving the methodology of assessing the infrastructural potential of regional innovation ecosystem have been identified: creating a unified terminological base, developing a comprehensive approach with the quantitative and qualitative methods integration, considering modern technological trends, and adapting advanced international practices to Russian conditions. The study results are of interest to federal, regional, and local authorities in the framework forming and implementing innovation policy and overcoming the territorial differentiation of regions with varying institutional density of innovation environment.