The article attempts to assess the possible parameters of the state of mechanical engineering in Russia in the event of a significant increase in the export of its products provided for by the national project “International Cooperation and Export”. The evaluation of the parameters is based on the premise that an increase in the export of engineering products will entail an increase in the volume of its production (provided that there is no decrease in domestic consumption) in the country, which in turn will necessitate a possible re-equipment and reconstruction of existing industries and the creation of new ones. In addition, increasing the output of competitive high-tech products will require increased R&D and the creation of related organizations. All this in total may require significant investment. Evaluation of hypothetical investments in the implementation of intentions to increase the export of engineering products was carried out according to the table of use of domestic products at basic prices from the Rosstat system of input-output tables. At the same time, the original table was transformed into a worksheet with the inclusion of the investment unit, as a result of calculations on which, apart from hypothetical investments equal to the difference between the initial and estimated values of fixed assets, the impact on the output of economic activities related to engineering was determined.

Implementation of innovative projects at first stages is associated with risks determined by high uncertainty of cash flows. As such, the application of standard methods to analyze the project’s economic efficiency does not allow us to give reliable estimates of the forecast dynamics of economic indicators. All this requires the development of special techniques for the analysis of the effectiveness of innovation spending. The use of real options as well as fuzzy sets approach seems to be a basic conceptual focus for the further improvement of these methods. The paper contains the results of the effectiveness estimation for an innovative project aimed at establishing motor fuel production from high energy biomass with the use of option and fuzzy sets analysis. The use of fuzzy sets methods makes it possible to complement the traditional financial analysis and quantitatively estimates sustainability of different indicators of the innovative project efficiency to a change in exogenous parameters. Besides, it could be rather useful to identify the project’s bottlenecks. Moreover, the application of this method allows to quantitatively estimate reliability of the calculated project effectiveness indicators. Hardly can such estimations be made by means of traditional methods of financial analysis; either low or high reliability of the obtained effectiveness indicators could serve as an additional argument in favor of negative or positive decision on the project finance, allowing a venture capital fund to allocate the resources among the analyzed innovative projects more efficiently. On the whole, the use of the real options combined with the fuzzy sets method is sure to expand venture capital tools used for financial justification of submitted projects.

The article discusses methodological approaches to assess absorption capacity (AC) of the firms and projects for knowledge and innovation. The purpose of the study is to compare the different approaches to characterize AC, taking into account internal and external factors of organizations to develop the policy of systematic promotion of generated knowledge towards commercialization of innovations. The applied research method is based on systematization of AC factors for different participants in both scientific and production cycles and an empirical expert analysis of conjugation of scientific results within the framework of a complete innovation cycle. The research focuses on the possibilities of productive transformation and application of knowledge to increase technology readiness level in the production and the use of catalysts. As a result, the approach to study project/program participants was proposed, which has made it possible to identify the effectiveness of knowledge transfer through the stages of a full scientific and production cycle, and the relevant criteria for the technology readiness level for each stage were applied. The test approach to assess knowledge absorption in case of scientific production cycle (NPC) of catalysis in Russia has demonstrated not only the strengths of AC in academic institutions - interdisciplinarity - but also revealed the gaps and weak links in NPC that inhibit the absorption of external knowledge in production - pilot tests and engineering of catalysts. AC assessment is important for the development of S&T policy because they are appropriate for both an individual organization and the participants in the integrated full-cycle innovative projects. The article provides a critical review of the methods and tools for the thorough analysis of the resources and institutional conditions required for knowledge absorption in the groups of interrelated participants as compared to the methods for analyzing the acquisition and assimilation of knowledge by one firm is sure to create new perspectives and concepts for the management of integration projects with the full innovation cycle. The article summarizes the key findings and gives recommendations applicable to the tasks outlined in the Strategy for Technological Development of Russia until 2030.

The article focuses on the application of process management models in industrial enterprises which best enhance their competitiveness and efficiency under the conditions of crisis development, increased risks, and uncertainty. The presented results of the study are based on the expert survey conducted among the heads and managers of Kuzbass machine-building enterprises on process-oriented management for the period 2015-2018. By interviewing 500 respondents - the participants of the conferences, seminars, round table discussions, and trainings held within the framework of various thematic exhibitions and fairs in Kemerovo and Novokuznetsk - the opinions of the managers and the leading experts representing 70 % of the enterprises of this industry were analyzed and summarized to specify their perceptions about the organizations’ activities and identify the urgent management problems they face. The article raises the main problems of implementing process management in the companies identified and ranked by the authors in the questionnaire which are as follows: first, non-optimal organizational structure, the need to restructure it and adapt to the process model; second, insufficient staff skills and general knowledge of process management; third, lack of financial resources and high time consumption; fourth, unclaimed processes, weak linkages to performance and the need to reduce excessive vertical interactions in their implementation. The possibilities to improve management in machine-building enterprises are considered from the point of view of process management. Risk-forming factors have been identified and optimal methods of risk management have been justified to ensure the efficiency of business structures in the field of production, and mechanical engineering. Conclusions have been drawn on the possibility of applying such an approach in almost any organization under the conditions of standard management, as well as the need to create up-to-date methods of process management with the specifics of machine-building enterprises, to adapt modern software to the conditions of digital economy, and to improve the skills and retraining of the managers.

Dynamic changes in the economic and social life of our country necessitate corresponding changes in the approaches to managing a modern University. One of these changes should be a new look at its corporate culture. The essence of the author’s approach is to consider corporate culture as a key marketing asset of the University that impact on the strategic vision for the organization and operational management of all activities and units of the University. At the same time, the culture should be entrepreneurial in nature, which determines the University’s ability to innovatively solve the tasks it faces and more successfully achieve the organization’s strategic goals. However, still there is no scientific consensus reached in the literature about its features and the role in the success of the university. The purpose of this article is to substantiate the relevance of the formation of entrepreneurial corporate culture in the Russian universities. At the same time, it is proposed to consider entrepreneurial corporate culture as a key marketing asset of the organization, which is sure to reduce the negative effect of external environment and more successfully achieve the strategic goals of the university. The article presents the algorithm, mechanisms, and the main tools for the formation of entrepreneurial culture, given the specifics of this asset for an educational organization and the existing external environment. Theoretical significance of the proposed approach is a balanced approach to the university management, optimally combining conventional and unconventional for the educational environment methods to manage an educational organization. The practical significance of the study lies in the possibility of using the proposed methodology for the formation of entrepreneurial culture to improve the efficiency of the university management.

The article is aimed at studying social entrepreneurship success and identifying the opinions of social entrepreneurs in the Primorsky region (krai) on the criteria for assessing the success of their activities and the reasons for choosing these criteria. The goal and the specific scope of the research required the application of such scientific instrumentation as case studies, interviews, observation and survey of entrepreneurs of social businesses of the Primorsky region in the period 2016-2017. The data used in the research were taken from various scientific journals and articles on management and entrepreneurship. The concept of success as well as the criteria for assessing the success of social entrepreneurship still remains insufficiently studied. The nature of social entrepreneurship is still the subject of scientific discussion, and there has always been contradictions in the definition of this concept. In social entrepreneurship, it is important to have a mixed mission, including both social and economic components. The respondents defined the success of social entrepreneurship as “a social business which is aimed to solve problems in the system of social protection, yield profit and financial stability, and provide the opportunity for its development”, with public utility and shared value being the main criteria to assess the success of social businesses. Preliminary results of the study can contribute to the development of theoretical knowledge for understanding social entrepreneurship nature and the success of its development. The relevance and practical application of this study is that the obtained results can help social entrepreneurs in making decisions on the analysis of their own enterprises’ success in accordance with their strategies, goals and objectives. The further scientific research in this field will require a longitudinal study to trace the dynamics of social enterprises in order to generalize the obtained results.

The paper presents the results obtained during the study of using digital technologies and successful practices of digitalization to increase efficiency of agricultural production and food products. Based on the analysis of economic publications of EconLit database in JEL macro categories as at the end of 2018, it has been revealed that the number of foreign and domestic publications on digitalization of agro-food complex for the period 2010-2018 is generally insufficient, with no any significant increase in the publications in this category being found. The proposed approach for the first time links such categories as digi tal technology , needs and agro-food complex by taking into account a set of consumer characteristics of agricultural and food products and production technologies. In order to assess the sectoral digital needs, the article considers such significant characteristics as the end-product complexity index, high value added products environment within the product category and their relationship with production technologies. The study proposes a methodology for determining digital priorities of agro-food products based on such characteristics as complexity index of products, product environment and its relationship with production technologies. The proposed approach develops the modern theory of economic complexity and allows us to assess the possibilities of using artificial intelligence technologies and big data analysis based on the linkage between upstream and downstream in value chain cycle activities.

We provide sufficient conditions for stability of a linear structurally heterogeneous economy under heterogeneous learning of agents, extending the results of Honkapohja and Mitra (2006), Kolyuzhnov (2011), and Bogomolova and Kolyuzhnov (2019). Sufficient conditions for stability under heterogeneous mixed RLS/SG learning for four classes of models: models without lags and with lags of the endogenous variable and with t - or ( t - 1)-dating of expectations, are provided for the cases of the diagonal structure of the shock process behaviour or the heterogeneous RLS learning and are presented in terms of structural heterogeneity and are independent of heterogeneity in learning. The results are based on the negative diagonal dominance approach and are provided, first, in terms of the existence of the weights for aggregation of endogenous vatiables and of expectations across agents, interrelated in a special way, and then in terms of the E -stability of a suitably defined aggregate economy. The fundamental nature of the approach adopted in the paper allows one to apply its results to a vast majority of the existing and prospective linear and linearized economic models (including estimated DSGE models) with adaptive learning of agents.

The paper examines the foundations of sponsorship research in order to better understand the conceptual and theoretical foundations that have underpinned the development of sponsorship to date. It tackles this field of study from a historical perspective and analyses available scholarly research, traces its development back to its early origins, highlights, tries to highlight the gaps found in academic literature and cite problems concerning the sponsorship application. Our study reveals the research in the field of sponsorship has been growing steadily over the last years. Our conclusion, which is deduced from our content analysis of publications, confirms the findings of similar previous studies in this sector. However, the problems are still various and diverse, some are of evaluation nature, others purely academic or related to function. When it comes to the Russian market, the lack of scholarly research is notable. In this context, sports sponsorship should not be seen and limited to sports economics or marketing. There are broader geopolitical and strategic dimensions at play, where sports sponsorship plays the role of a soft power tool. Therefore, There is a need for the development of this field, not only in Russia but also globally.

The article discusses the position and development level of individual entrepreneurship in the Tyumen region. The study reveals a number of urgent problems entrepreneurs faced as well as some factors that have both positive and negative impact on the formation of investment attractiveness of the region. This article focuses on the expert assessment of the development level of individual entrepreneurship; the factors affecting the level of entrepreneurship; the expert suggestions to enhance individual entrepreneurship in the region. An expert survey was conducted in the southern part of the Tyumen region, and the opinions of at least 100 competent experts - the heads and the specialists of the state and local self-government bodies as well as individual entrepreneurs - were presented. Despite the fact that various measures to support individual entrepreneurs were taken, there have been revealed several factors which negatively affect entrepreneurial business in the region. Besides, it was found out that entrepreneurs usually face such problems as stiff market competition, lack of start-up capital, high taxes, increase in the requirements for conducting individual entrepreneurship, poor communication, and lack of awareness and familiarity with the benefits and incentives among the entrepreneurs.