THE ROLE OF INFRASTRUCTURAL SUPPORT OF INNOVATIVE ACTIVITY OF ENTERPRISES IN OVERCOMING OBSTACLES ON ITS WAY

In the process of carrying out their innovative activities, enterprises face various obstacles. Overcoming these obstacles often necessitates assistance from the subjects of infrastructural provision of innovative activity. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to determine the role played by the infrastructural support of innovative activity of enterprises in overcoming obstacles that arise in the process of carrying out this activity. Two methods of assessing obstacles that arise during enterprises' implementation of their innovative activities are defined. The first method consists in distinguishing the sequence of stages of the process of implementation of innovative projects by business entities and applying the ratio of the total number of projects that have not passed a certain stage to the number of projects that have successfully overcome all previous stages of the innovation process. The second method of evaluating obstacles on the path of innovative activity is based on conducting a survey of enterprise managers regarding the level of obstacles that appear at each stage of the innovation process, and averaging the results of such a survey. In order to establish the role of infrastructural support of innovative activity of enterprises in overcoming obstacles on its way, a number of enterprises were selected and divided into three groups, namely: enterprises that did not seek help from innovative infrastructure entities during the reporting period; enterprises that applied for such help, but to a limited extent; enterprises that actively applied for such help. The conducted empirical analysis of samples of enterprises belonging to five branches of industry showed that infrastructural support of innovative activity significantly contributed to overcoming those barriers that arise during the implementation of this activity. At the same time, according to the results of the conducted dispersion analysis, the dependence between the level of infrastructural support of innovative activity of enterprises and the averaged values of internal obstacles that appear during the implementation of this activity was statistically significant.