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The article discusses the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic response that has engulfed most countries, highlights and analyses the response strategies adopted by governments. Using the example of the United States, Russia, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan and China, the authors have analysed the adopted restrictive regimes, models of enforcement to comply with them, schemes and tools to support the economy. According to open sources, the authors estimated the duration and severity of the restrictive regimes for economic and social activity, the severity of punishments for violations of restrictive regimes, the scale of assistance to the population and business, and compliance with restrictive regimes. The article pays a special attention to identifying the role of "soft" factors, such as trust and national culture, in the implementation of the pandemic response policy. The authors used the index of ethnic fractionalization to characterize the homogeneity of society. The article confirms that more collectivist, long-term and less masculine cultures tend to strictly comply with restrictive regimes, but the penalties imposed in countries with such a cultural code have been more severe. The analysis showed that in countries with a more individualized and masculine culture, large packages of support for the population and business were allocated with a moderate severity of punishment for non-compliance with restrictions. In these countries, the tension and discontent of the population, which had accumulated during the period of the restrictive regimes, became more pronounced. The results obtained give grounds to assert that "soft" factors play an important role in shaping the policy of responding to the threat of a pandemic; the strategies chosen by countries in an explicit or implicit form reflect national, cultural and institutional characteristics

The paper discusses possibilities and directions for bridging the gaps between academic research and business by reducing barriers and strengthening incentives for the development of partnership interactions between participants of the regional innovation ecosystem. Many researchers from developed and developing countries focus on the problems of interaction between universities and companies in order to find ways to increase academic research effectiveness and make the results relevant to the business sector's real demand. Development of partnership relations is known to be a factor which accelerates creation and dissemination of innovations. Improvement of such relationship favours academic researchers' possibilities, educational programs adjustment, and regional economy development. Basing on international experience review, the paper determines the main tendencies and perspectives of research – business cooperation as well as key directions of partnership cooperation support. The empirical part of the paper deals with the results of original pilot survey which uses data from a number of research, educational organizations and high tech companies from Novosibirsk region. The aim of the survey was to analyze success factors and main obstacles for sustainable research – business cooperation. Qualitative methods including case studies, interviews, and surveys were used within the research. It is shown that, although all representatives of science and business recognize the need to develop partnership relationships, differences in motivations and conflicting goals of participants still remain. Besides well known barriers (lack of financial and other resources, personnel etc.) some other factors turned to be important. Low level of confidence and negative cooperation experience impede cooperation development. Personal issues and previous successful experience help to develop and improve partnerships. Such cases could be found. State support (especially at the regional level) is quite necessary; it is not limited to financial instruments. Support of communications which helps to increase the level of confidence and to decrease "attrition costs" of cooperation is also of great importance