To ensure economic sustainability in a market environment characterized by financial stability, competitiveness of products and technology, production and sales efficiency, large enterprises carry out reactive and strategic innovations driven by reactions to competitors' transformations and changes in the external environment. Reactive innovations are opportunistic in nature, while strategic innovations are proactive, since their implementation leads to significant competitive advantages in the future.

Innovation activity is a systemic type of activity aimed at creating and implementing innovations into public practice - turnkey innovations.

The innovation process is based on the innovative activity of society. The innovation process is a set of intellectual work to create a new labor product. A new product can be expressed in technical, production and commercial characteristics.

The innovation process involves the inclusion of new characteristics in technology, new qualitative parameters of the finished consumer product (public and private consumption), as well as new technologies aimed at meeting public and personal needs.

Types of innovations are differentiated by industry: in the fuel, printing and metallurgy industries, technological innovations predominate; and in other industries - grocery, which accounts for almost two-thirds of all costs. They are also more knowledge-intensive - when they are implemented, a third of all invested funds are spent on R&D.

More than 70% of enterprises innovate to expand their product range in order to gain a market segment. Reducing production costs is the goal of almost half of the total number of innovatively active enterprises

Any innovative activity is entrepreneurial and is based on:

Searching for new ideas (from a new product to a new structure) and evaluating them;

Finding the necessary resources;

Creation and management of an enterprise;

Receiving monetary income and personal satisfaction with the results achieved.

Not all entrepreneurship is innovative, but only those that allow entrepreneurial income to be generated as a result of the creation of production, use or diffusion of an innovative product. Subjects of innovative entrepreneurship include enterprises and organizations engaged in innovative activities. In a market economy, the development of innovative entrepreneurship depends on consumer demand for innovation, the presence of developed scientific and technical potential of the national economy, the functioning of venture capital firms and investors financing risky innovative activities. The first innovative enterprises on the territory of Russia existed in such organizational forms as centers for scientific and technical creativity of youth, unions of inventors and innovators, scientific and technical societies, and scientific and technical cooperatives. These enterprises used the material and technical base, scientific reserves and personnel potential of state research institutes and design bureaus. Due to the deterioration of the economic situation and the decrease in innovative demand, many of the above organizational forms ceased their activities or changed their direction.

The study of subjects of innovative activity involves considering what they are in a highly developed market economy, what economic relations they are in and what functions they perform. Without analyzing modern theoretical ideas about the nature and nature of the innovative activities of economic entities in economically developed countries, it is impossible to identify and practically implement the priorities that the processes of reforming the domestic innovation sphere should follow.

The most important function of innovative enterprises is to play an intermediary role between the scientific, technical and production spheres, ensuring almost automatic economic exchange between them without any failures, in competitive conditions. Innovative enterprises, in addition to bringing the product of scientific and technical activity to a state that allows it to be used in the production sector (through the creation of various objects of the innovative product), search for a commercial partner capable of satisfying a new latent social need, “fraught with” possible profit. Thus, innovative firms (enterprises) arise as a consequence of the social need to reduce costs that appear in the process of transforming a product created in the scientific and technical sphere into a product created in the economic sphere. Innovative enterprises make it possible to eliminate some of the costs and reduce production costs, i.e. they act as an institutional form that ensures effective interaction between scientific and technical institutes and private economic entities within the framework of market relations. Innovative enterprises themselves are distinguished as independent economic entities if their functioning makes it possible to reduce the costs that scientific and technical institutes and economic entities are forced to bear associated with the creation of an innovative product or bringing scientific and technical innovations to the possibility of their commercial use. Based on their content, innovations are divided into technical, economic, organizational, managerial, and social. Particular attention should be paid to research, since in many cases it is of the nature of fundamental research, which, as a rule, is organized and financed by the state. The extent to which the state organizes and finances scientific activities primarily determines the results of fundamental research into their implementation in the national economy, and, consequently, its effectiveness.

Scientific work is targeted in nature, and the research carried out in it is aimed at obtaining new discoveries or improving existing discoveries.

The scientific process carries with it the novelty of research, originality, validity - technical, economic, environmental and consumer.

For scientific activities, the advantage is the presence of experience, research skills, standard methods and techniques.

Theoretical research itself is of a general nature and is not applied research. Theoretical research is divided into new discoveries, refinement and processing of existing discoveries. Experience shows that more than 90% of theoretical studies are negative, and of the remaining 10%, not everything is acceptable for the consumer market.

Innovative entrepreneurship is a multifaceted type of economic activity. Entrepreneurs are individuals and legal entities carrying out the following types of initiative activities related to the reproduction cycle of an innovative product:

Creation of an innovative product (actually innovative entrepreneurship);

Performing intermediary functions (providing services related to the promotion of an innovative product and its transfer from the direct creator to its consumer);

Carrying out functions in the financial sector to ensure innovative activities.

Being relatively independent, these types of entrepreneurial activities in the innovation sphere complement each other, although they can differ significantly in organizational and legal form, in the content of operations and methods of their implementation. The choice of the form of an innovative enterprise depends on personal preferences, field of activity, and availability of funds.

The strengths of small innovative enterprises include the following:

Prompt management decision making, allowing to reduce the duration of the innovation cycle;

Low level of overhead costs, thanks to direct and personal contacts with them;

The absence of bureaucratic procedures in the organization due to the minimal management hierarchy of enterprises.

Difficulties in the activities of such enterprises are associated with the low professional level of management, limited opportunities for external financing, and low specialization of jobs. Due to the absence of many structural divisions, which is associated with an insignificant degree of division of labor, small innovative enterprises do not receive a synergistic effect. Many economists associate innovative entrepreneurship with the ability to promote innovation through risky business, and the subjects of innovative entrepreneurship include small risky firms that are able to implement commercially attractive innovations and make a profit on this basis. However, in addition to small forms of innovative entrepreneurship (typical representatives are venture enterprises created to test, refine and bring risky innovations to industrial implementation), there are medium and large organizational forms of innovative entrepreneurship. Both small and medium-sized forms of innovative enterprises can be represented by the following organizations:

Business center (business incubator), promoting the development of joint entrepreneurship and providing management and services in legal, accounting, economic and other activities to small businesses;

An innovation company specializing in implementation, patenting and licensing, promoting scientific and technical innovations and objects of innovation to the market, bringing inventions to commercial use and selling licenses. Large innovative enterprises are conservative and slow to respond to new social needs and the commercially profitable implementation of new ideas into a market product. The high efficiency of small innovative enterprises is explained by a prompt response to new scientific ideas and to solving specific problems associated with obtaining the final result from the sale of an innovative product.

Successful innovation is an achievement not of intellect, but of will.

J. Schumpeter,

economist, political scientist, sociologist, historian of economic thought

ESSENCE OF INNOVATION ACTIVITY OF THE ENTERPRISE

One of the priority goals of most countries in the world is to ensure long-term economic growth. This refers to the production of more and better quality goods and services and, as a result, a higher standard of living for the population.

Economic growth is the result of the successful activities of enterprises in all sectors of the national economy and depends largely on the innovative activities of enterprises.

Innovation activities- is a process aimed at implementing the results of completed scientific research and development or other scientific and technical achievements in a new or improved product sold on the market, in a new or improved technological process used in practical activities, as well as related additional research and development .

The development of innovative activities of enterprises in Russia is extremely complicated by the inability of the previous innovation management system to new economic conditions. The innovation policy of enterprises should be aimed at increasing the production of fundamentally new types of products and technologies, expanding sales of domestic goods.

In connection with innovation, two models of entrepreneurship are distinguished: classical and innovative.

Classic model is a traditional, reproductive, routine entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur within the framework of this model activates the internal reserves of the enterprise to increase profits and increase profitability. The success of entrepreneurship under this model is often linked to subsidies and protectionism from the federal government and regional authorities. Innovation model is an innovative (productive) entrepreneurship, which involves the search for such ways of developing an enterprise, which are based on innovations or innovations brought to the stage of final use.

J. Schumpeter introduced into economics the distinction between economic growth and economic development. The difference between these two concepts is most easily explained in the words of Schumpeter himself: “Put as many mail coaches in a row as you like, but you won’t have a railway.”

Economic growth is the increase in production and consumption of the same goods and services (particularly mail coaches) over time. Economic development is, first of all, the emergence of something new, previously unknown (for example, railways), or, in other words, innovation. This is how Schumpeter himself defined innovation. His concept of innovation includes five cases)