Comparative Analysis of Innovation Activity in the Regions of Ukraine: Trends and Problems

The purpose of the article is to analyze the state of innovation in Ukraine and on this basis to justify the patterns and trends of innovation activity in the regions. In the first part of the study, the author's attention is focused on the development of the innovative system of Ukraine as a whole, which allows to determine the place of Ukraine in the international arena and to provide a comparison with the level of innovative development of other countries. The article defines a system of indicators for conducting a comparative analysis of the innovative activity of the regions of Ukraine in terms of components: 1) development trends of innovatively active enterprises; 2) features of the development of scientific and scientific-technical work; 3) problems of the formation and development of the innovation infrastructure system. To determine the trends of innovative activity in some cases, a comparison of the weighted average indicators for different periods (2016-2018, 2008-2010, 2014-2016) was carried out. The data used by the author for a comparative analysis of the innovative activity of the regions of Ukraine are taken from statistical collections of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine. The analysis was carried out for of the following: the cost structure of enterprises for innovation; the dynamics of funds aimed at financing scientific and scientific-technical work; the dynamics of innovation infrastructure facilities in Ukraine. It was revealed that the innovation activity of Ukrainian enterprises is primarily aimed at the implementation of marketing and organizational innovations, which are characterized by low cost compared to technological innovations. The study results show that today in Ukraine there is a high level of differentiation of scientific potential. There are significant imbalances in the state of the scientific and technical environment in the regions. As in the case of the innovative activity of the regions, there was a concentration of research institutions in developed cities with over one million people, as a result, various initial conditions for the introduction of innovations were formed. The regions with powerful cities gained a significant advantage.