Regional innovations systems: New approaches to innovation infrastructure assesment

The conducted research shows that the effectiveness of innovation processes in the region is largely determined by innovation infrastructure, as it is the basic component of the region's innovation system and determines the pace of its development. The main goal of the study is to develop an author's approach to innovative infrastructure assessment methods and to recommend measures to improve the process of forming and developing the region's innovative infrastructure. The urgency of solving this scientific problem lies in the fact that achieving the effective operation of the region and increasing its competitiveness is impossible without mastering innovations (products, technologies, services, markets). Systematization of literary sources showed that most authors do not take into account all elements of regional innovation infrastructure. The process of evaluating the innovative infrastructure will make it possible to make an effective choice of strategic programs regarding its creation, operation and development and ensure the timely response of the regional innovation system to its change. The methodological toolkit of research methods was the last twenty years of research by leading scientists. The object of the research is the region (innovative infrastructure), it is here that innovative processes are implemented and an assessment of innovative infrastructure at various stages of their implementation is necessary. The subsystems of innovative infrastructure proposed by scientists quite rigidly fix specific objects of innovative infrastructure of the region. In practice, the same object of innovative infrastructure can simultaneously act as a production and technological platform, and a source of funding for regional innovations, and as an information portal for the dissemination of the results of innovative activities, and even as an educational platform. In this regard, such a grouping can lead to a distortion of the results of the analysis of the innovative infrastructure of the region, if generalizing indicators for the region as a whole are used as indicators of the success of its functioning. After analyzing the existing methods of evaluating the innovative infrastructure of the region, we come to the conclusion that practically each of the methods discussed above can be applied for certain partial cases with the given parameters of the region. The study empirically confirms and theoretically proves that there is a direct relationship between the innovative development of the region and the functioning of the innovative infrastructure. The results of the research can be useful for various regions and innovative infrastructure organizations that provide services for business, promote the commercialization of scientific results, and help in the creation of small innovative enterprises. For the formation and development of the innovative infrastructure of the region, a number of measures are proposed, which should be included in the regional development program