R&D Intensive Development Strategy for Ukraine: National Features in the Context of the Global Trend

Abstract

The relevance of the study is due to the peripheral status of R&D and innovation in the economic system of Ukraine. Its aim is to identify the characteristics and problems of modern strategic R&D intensive and innovation policy in the global socio-economic context, and to justify the need for a new model of the national innovation policy for the socio-economic progress. The study is made using general scientific and statistical methods, domestic and foreign analytical sources, and international statistics.

It is emphasized that since the beginning of the 21th century developed countries have been actively implementing a new model of the national innovation policy, aiming to revive industrial production (reindustrialization) on the innovation grounds mainly through exploiting internal regional resources of R&D and innovation.

The Ukrainian economy is dominated in our days by regional economies of industrial agrarian rather than agrarian-industrial type, which are incapable to promote an industrial development driven in a strategic perspective by competition, R&D and innovation, i. e. an economic model capable to reduce the socio-economic risks associated with integration in the global and European research and innovation area. It is demonstrated that such a model cannot be implemented unless an ambitious national strategy for R&D and innovation driven development is elaborated, based on a system mechanism of cluster-network building and development of R&D intensive industry and national-regional innovation infrastructures; its operation has to rely upon Regional Research Centers of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Ministry for Education and Science of Ukraine.

It is shown that the Ukrainian economy, which continues to be peripheral in the innovation terms in the global socio-economic context, still has a chance to become competitive due to opportunities to increase the potential of production complexity, high technology and human capital, given that Ukraine still remains a country with the rocket and space industry.