Research Potential of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences as a Strategic Factor in Regional Development

The article brings to the fore the issues related to identifying and assessing the relationship between the development of the research sector and the innovative growth of regions. It is shown that the key feature of the knowledge generation sector is research potential, the essence of which is directly related to the level of development of fundamental and applied research, the degree of their implementation in the material sector of the economy. We reveal that at present the research is carried out, which affects various aspects of the assessment of research potential, identifying the trends in its development and mechanisms of its implementation at different levels. The comparative analysis carried out in the article shows that all methodological approaches include a fairly identical set of indicators characterizing quantitative characteristics and their dynamics; many of them use aggregated indices that make it possible to compare countries and regions. In addition to the existing methods, our own approach proposes to analyze not only quantitative, but also qualitative characteristics in order to create conditions for the formation of the environment for innovative development of the region. Thus, on the example of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences we show that the priority directions of research development should not only correspond to the global and national scientific agenda, but also address the issues of innovative development of the regions in which research centers are located. The article presents the analysis of the regions in which scientific institutes and centers of the Ural Branch of RAS are located; we make a classification of these regions, highlighting the regions-innovators, regions-followers and catching up regions; priorities of innovation and technological development are identified for each region and then they are compared with the priorities of the Ural Branch of RAS. We put forward the thesis that in addition to the concentration of researchers the most important condition for the generation of knowledge and for the creation of breakthrough technologies is a high concentration of investment resources in the field of science. On the example of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences we present the data on the need for investment in the development of scientific organizations and scenarios for their development.