Economic geocode of the old industrial region: assessment of aptitude to innovative development[Экономический Геокод Старопромышленного Региона: Оценка Предрасположенности К Инновационному Развитию]

The article is devoted to solving the standard problems of an old industrial region in the framework of the application of a genetic approach, which examines the geocode of the territory that is a system of its hereditary records, which determines its economic specifics and aptitude to various endogenous processes. The purpose of the article is to prove the scientific hypothesis that the economic geocode of an old industrial region illustrates not only its low innovation capacity, but also its weak aptitude to innovative development, which hinders the industrial renewal of the territory. To prove the hypothesis it was necessary to solve the following tasks: to reveal the economic identity of the functioning of old industrial regions that determine the specificity of their geocode; to develop a method of assessing the aptitude of an old industrial region to innovative development in terms of its economic geocode territory; to test the guidelines identifying the transforming directions of the innovation component in the economic geocode of an old industrial region. The research is based on the author’s matrix method for identifying the aptitude of the old industrial territory to innovative development using evaluation indicators that reflect the demand, quality and capacity of scientific and innovative performance of universities, which are the basic generators of innovative ideas and applied technical developments for industrial enterprises in the region. Approbation of the author’s method and proof of the scientific hypothesis were carried out within the context of the Sverdlovsk, Tyumen and Chelyabinsk regions of the Ural region. The assumption that the old industrial region has a low predisposition to innovative development turned out to be correct. It was also found that the Sverdlovsk region has the greatest propensity for innovative development, although its value is not high at the interregional level of comparisons. The obtained results indicate that the geocode considered old-industrial region contains the values of the performance indicators, yielding similar indicators of the Central territories of the Russian Federation that actualizes the necessity of improving the organization of scientific and innovation activities of leading universities in the territories in the context of transformation of their economic geocode.