This article presents the findings of the study on the role of innovative entrepreneurship in the regional economy. The analysis is based on the methodology developed by Hermann Simon, a German scientist who has coined the term ”hidden champions” describing the phenomenon of little-known successful companies that act as innovative growth engines in the German economy. Today, the economies in different countries are developing amid the ”new normal,” in which no expected recovery followed the global crisis of 2008. This makes it necessary to rethink the role of entrepreneurship during a prolonged recession. The authors proposed and tested the hypothesis that, in this environment, the economic growth in the country and the region is increasingly determined not so much by large businesses, but by many small innovative companies. To identify Russian ”hidden champions,” we studied more than 1247 companies listed in the Innovation and Investment Market, a specialized section of the Moscow Exchange, and included in the specialized Register of Business Entities that use nanotechnology. We identified specifically Russian features of innovative entrepreneurship related to national cultural and historical characteristics and the current policy of import substitution. The authors proposed their own method for assessing the innovative entrepreneurship as a source of economic growth in the Russian regions that defines five groups of innovative entrepreneurs (global market leader, one of the global market leaders, Russian market leader, one of the Russian market leaders, not the leader in the Russian market) and compares them with large companies in terms of turnover and profit dynamics. Based on such criteria as ”number of ”hidden champions” and ”number of large enterprises per 100 thousand organizations,” we built a model for the ratio of ”hidden champions” to major companies in the Russian regions that identifies, for each criterion, three subgroups, including leaders, medium-tier and outsiders, which allowed to identify nine types of Russian regions and substantiate different development strategies for main types of regions. The study confirms that the most justified strategy for the development of innovative entrepreneurship in the region is the strategy of cooperation between different types of companies in order to overcome their weaknesses, enhance existing opportunities and activate the innovation and entrepreneurial capacity.

Enhancing the role of entrepreneurship as an instrument of export diversification for sustainable development of the economy of the country and regions is a topical problem. The research is focused on the regional export potential including youth startups (small and medium enterprises, or SME), whose non-raw exports should increase by 1.5–2 times by 2020 according to the roadmap «Export» approved the Government of the Russian Federation The purpose of the article is to clarify theoretical and methodological foundations as well as to develop assessment methodology and appropriate recommendations on the enhancing the export potential of technology SME. As a hypothesis, we have suggested that there is a relationship between the regional export potential and the development of the start-up youth movement. The study used mathematical methods for processing statistical data, in particular, a correlation analysis of export statistics and start-up companies. The methodological tools were tested on the example of statistical data of 2016 for 39 regions of Russia. According to the correlation analysis, we have identified the direct moderate dependence between the specific weight of technologies export in the gross regional product (GRP) and the number of residents of business incubators in regions. In other words, the influence of the development of regional technology export on the number of existing startup companies is positive but moderate. This conclusion contributes to the solution of the task to ensure Russia’s status as a global technology leader by increasing a share of high-tech export, including SME and start-ups focused on export. The content analysis has shown that the emerging regional concepts and export development strategies give insufficient consideration to the export potential of SME. Therefore, we offer a set of measures to enhance this potential including organizational and coordination aspect of the export ecosystem. The results can serve as a guideline for developing mechanisms and instruments to promote the development of non-raw exports of technology SME to diversify the regional economy.

Due to rapid technological changes, there is a need to consider the digitalization of the economy as a global competition tool, especially in regards to non-resource export. The study examines the relationship between the total regional export of technological products and digitalization of the Russian economy. We hypothesise that the developing digitalization of business effectively increases the regional export of technological products. As the methodological basis, we focus on various theoretical approaches of foreign and Russian authors to assessing the digitalization impact on the development of national and regional economies. For assessing that impact, we created a model that evaluates the correlation between the export of technological products and probable impact factors, including an integrated digitalization index. The author’s typology of the Russian regions allowed identifying the differences in their digitalization processes. The research method is the regression analysis that includes the ordinary least squares method. We tested the research model on the data of Federal State Statistic Service and Federal Customs Service for 2018. As a result, we determined four types of regions and confirmed that digitalization is a driver of their economic development: the level of digitalization influences the global competitiveness of the regions, including high-tech exports. The model can be considered as a tool for analysing and predicting the development of technological export for 4 types of regions. For each type, we described possible development strategies, aimed at overcoming the limitations in technological export, taking into account the digitalization of business. Authorities and companies competing for new strategic markets can apply the research findings for developing and implementing the mechanisms and tools of digitalization in order to ensure the leadership of the regions in terms of technological export.