Search results

This article is dedicated to identifying innovative firms. A wide-spread process for identifying innovativeness in firms and its relationship to the high-techsector is exposed to criticism. It is confirmed that large expenditures on R&D in a firms sales, which, according to international methods, is a sign of a hightech focus within a firm, is not typical for many types of innovation, particularly in industries dealing with the diffusion and application of knowledge. The special role of non-high-tech innovations for modernizing the Russian economy is emphasized.

The article is based on the empirical study of fast growing firms ("Gazelles") in Russia. Sales volumes of many such firms are growing in accordance with the precise exponential trend with surprisingly high quality of approximation. The author finds strong links between this phenomenon and the concentration of most of "Gazelles" in market niches where demand limitations are practically non-existent. Conscious, purposeful entrepreneurial search of free niches becomes under described conditions an important addition to the classic mechanism of evolution of the economy through the natural selection of random changes. The author's approach to these processes is based on a modification of the well known Lotka-Volterra model.