Scientific and technological potential of a territory and its comparative appraisal

The achievement of national goals of strengthening international competitiveness and improving national welfare in modern conditions is impossible without improving the efficiency of regional development management, so that each region is able to fully exploit their socio-economic potential. One of the foundations of competitiveness, economic efficiency and balanced socio-economic development of a country may be a multipolar regional structure. According to international experience, the gaps between leading economic centers, peripheral or depressed regions may be eliminated by creating opportunities for increasing the regions’ own potential for rapid development. This poses special challenges for the regional policy and the scope of its theoretical and methodological, methodical support. Its key element should be scientific, technological and innovative policy aimed at balanced development of scientific and technological space of the country. This is stated in the Strategy for scientific and technological development of Russia up to 2035, which aims to obtain technologies which would be able to address the main challenges, increase the share of innovative products in GDP, bring domestic science-intensive technologies to new markets, and increase the effectiveness of Russian scientists’ research. The purpose of the present paper is to develop theoretical and methodical foundations and tools of researching scientific and technological development in all its dimensions covering territorially-specific processes of generation, development and dissemination of knowledge. The article discusses the concept of “scientific and technological potential” and the related economic categories and justifies the authors’ position. The authors conducted the analysis of the existing domestic and foreign approaches to the assessment of scientific and technological potential. They suggest a methodical approach to the assessment of the level of scientific and technological development. Methodological research tools include mathematical methods of statistical data processing and imply the calculation of the multiplicative indices based on 14 indicators. The testing of methodological tools conducted on the basis of the materials of 80 RF constituent entities in 2011-2014. Based on the conducted research, the main issues of scientific and technological development have been identified, a system of proposals for their solution has been developed.