Innovation potential of Russia’s working population in the dynamics of three decades of reforms

The problem associated with the identification of the innovative potential of an employee implies, first of all, the disclosure of those qualitative characteristics of personality, which reflect its receptivity, readiness and ability to innovations and risks, assimilation and implementation of scientific and technological achievements in everyday professional activities, as well as flexible response to changes in the external environment. As a basic indicator of innovativeness of a worker’s personality, we consider their value orientation toward initiative, entrepreneurship, search for new things in work and life, readiness to take risks as opposed to the orientation towards respect for established traditions, customs, following the habitual, accepted by the majority. According to this indicator, the share of Russian employees with signs of innovativeness has increased over 30 years of reforms from 45% in 2001 to 65% in 2021. We assume that personal experience, successful practices and results of innovative qualities implementation rather than organizational influences become the determining factors of growth. In this regard, the social contradiction between the innovative potential of employees accumulated over the years of reforms and the lack of adequate incentives on the part of society and organizations for its constructive use is relevant. The article reveals socio-demographic and socio-cultural characteristics of workers of innovative type on the basis of reference to the materials of monitoring studies conducted by the Institute of Sociology - Branch of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of RAS in 2001, 2011, 2021. The article shows that when identifying the typological categories of innovative workers, in addition to the orientation towards entrepreneurship and the search for new things in work and life, it is necessary to take into account the orientation toward the future, as well as the values of individual freedom. We make the conclusion about the three leading factors of preserving the accumulated potential of innovativeness ofRussian workers: a) material well-being; b) guarantees of individual freedom values, c) confidence in a better future.