Small Business and Innovation Processes in Russian Regions: Prospects for Further Development

Purpose: revealing interrelation of small business development and innovativeness of Russian regions. Methodology: to enable the analysis of interrelations of levels of small business development and innovativeness of Russian regions, they are presented as five large groups which are homogeneous in terms of a set of parameters characterizing the concentration of small enterprises, workers, production volumes in the small business sectors of manufacturing, construction, transport, and trade. These interrelations were recorded based on the division of regions within the selected clusters, according to the indicators of the All-Russian rating of innovative development. Conclusion: as follows from the analysis, it has been established that at a qualitative level it is possible to detect the conformity of levels of small business development and innovativeness of regions. However, within the first three clusters ranged according to levels of small business development, there is a strong differentiation of regions according to their degree of innovativeness. This prevents from asserting with certainty that the abovementioned interrelation has a clear quantitative dependence. There is a clear direct relationship between levels of development between groups of regions. In Clusters with low level of small business development, most regions are characterized by low ratings of innovative development. It cannot be argued that the dependence identified has a causative-consecutive nature. More likely, there are various manifestations of socioeconomic activity of population and organizations throughout the country as an institutional characteristic of administrative-territorial entities of the country. No relationship was found between the levels of innovativeness of regions and the sectoral structure of small business.