Comparative analysis of methods for evaluating innovative entrepreneurial projects

The study comparatively analyzed the methods of evaluating innovative entrepreneurial projects for compliance with the criteria used in competitions for financing innovative entrepreneurial projects. These evaluation criteria included: innovation component, commercialization perspectives, qualitative characteristics of the manager and the team, investment attractiveness and economic and social effect of the innovation implementation. The paper examines the problems of evaluating innovative entrepreneurial projects and emphasizes the importance of assessing their potential at early stages. The study considers the following methods: TRL, FMEA and QFD. The objective of the research is to prove the feasibility and possibility of applying TRL, QFD and FMEA methods in the context of evaluating innovative entrepreneurial projects. The choice of these methods is conditioned by the peculiarities of innovative entrepreneurial projects, namely the necessity to assess the level of readiness of innovation, high level of risk and determination of compliance with market needs. The key advantages and disadvantages of these methods in the context of their application to innovative entrepreneurial projects are identified. It is revealed that not all of the above methods can be applied to assess specific criteria, also not all of them are universal within the project life cycle. This study forms a required toolkit for early stage evaluation of innovative entrepreneurial projects.