THE MULTI-CRITERIA TECHNIQUES OF EVALUATING TECHNOLOGIES PROSPECTIVE FOR CREATING NEW ECONOMIC SECTORS

Abstract

This paper identifies the steps, parameters and criteria for evaluating technologies in terms of its potential for creating new sectors in the economy of resource region. We established the key principles for prioritizing the directions of technological development: maximizing the technology’s potential for future economy, integrating the effects of regional development with national economy. The study is based on an analysis of the global and national trends in technological development, identification of technological gaps and assessment of the opportunities available to the Russian regions. We defined the term of «prospective technologies» as technologies aimed at both maintaining traditional resource and infrastructure sectors and creating booming sectors («high tech» and «knowledge economy»). These new sectors are oriented towards the development of new markets and market niches, creation of products with new attributes, which results in substantial multiplicative effects on the region’s economy. The procedure of evaluation includes several types of criteria: capability to confront the global economic challenges, to respond to the main trends in science and technology prevailing in Russian Federation and meet the needs of regional development. We used the following parameters for evaluation: the share of leadership in programs of international and interregional cooperation, the percentage of innovative and «high tech» products and services that were exported, the share of regional enterprises’ participation in creation and functioning of new territorial clusters, the share of production with increasing value added etc. To choose prospective technologies we suggest using their links to convergent technologies, priority trends in science and technology, the technologies critical for social, economic and technological development of different Russian regions. The proposed technique was tested using the data obtained in Krasnoyarsk Krai. This technique is particularly useful for evaluating technologies with respect to the purposes and priorities of the economic development of Krasnoyarsk Krai. The assessment of multiplicative effects is based on the matrix of perspective directions of technological development for resource and infrastructure development of «high tech» sectors of regional economy.