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This paper demonstrates regional (Russian) specificity of knowledge management, describes development trends for digital society in the Russian Federation and their effect on the general level of preparedness and capacity for knowledge management at the level of companies and at the personal (individual) level. Trends and current performance of digital transformation of Russian economy are explored. On this ground, the analysis is performed of the potential for development of knowledge management in the Russian Federation in digital economy environment. As a result of the measures taken by the Russian Government, substantial shift in labor market has been recently observed (including emergence of new professions and change in forms of employment and in relations between employers and employees). At the same time at the state level, active and broad-scale deployment of information technologies in socially significant spheres (education, medicine, state services) is taking place. Consequences of these changes have radical implications for preparedness of companies and individuals for positive perception of processes and tools of knowledge management. Of particular significance to this effect is the growth of prevalence in Russia of mobile devices with Internet access, which causes deeper "submersion" of individuals and companies into various Internet-environments of social networks. Conclusion is drawn from this academic research that Russia's transition to a higher level of digitalization of society allows companies to extend their range of sources of knowledge and make further arrangements for exchange of knowledge with the most numerous category - citizens, clients, users. Recommendations are provided for assessment of preparedness of companies, their employees and consumers for more extensive application of KM tools in their activities, and for raising the level of preparedness to dissemination of knowledge among ordinary citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interconnection of innovation activity and productivity growth is rather discussed topic, but there is still no consensus on this issue. We study the determinants of enterprise productivity using unique micro level data of the Russian firms augmented with city and regional data. We are aiming to shed light on how knowledge accumulation, human capital, and other external factors affect productivity of Russian firms. Used dataset covers such groups of factors as micro-indicators of firm performance, innovative activity indicators, human capital and education, spatial indexes and others. The paper considers not only Russian enterprises in general, but also their individual subgroups, divided by the type of goods produced, location and size. We conclude that there is a positive impact of the number of patent applications per capita and technology imports on company productivity, with greater effects observed for more "traditional" industrial groups, while for high-tech industries these indicators are insignificant. This, as well as the negative impact of spending on innovation on the productivity, suggest that level of development of basic industries is inadequate, which in turn slows the growth rates of technologically intensive industries. Among the Russian firms, there is a stable positive impact of city specialization on productivity of firms, which indicates the possibility of successful formation of industrial clusters and mono-settlements. There are number of significant differences observed between federal districts as well, confirming an argument for the diversified and region-specific innovation policy. We find that import of technologies has significant positive effect on productivity only for firms in less developed federal districts, while for others it is insignificant. At the same time effects of sending on innovation is effective only for the Central federal district, the most advanced one. The obtained results may be used as a recommendation when constructing and improving the regional innovation policies across Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge management (KM) has long been associated with organizational practices for innovation, i.e. innovation strategies, and enterprises' innovation strategies have long been associated with firm performance. The existing research has much proliferated in demonstrating benefits of interconnecting the three areas and has presented many KM practices as prerequisites for successful innovation and/or firm performance. However, the integration of different kinds of KM into firm activities, especially into innovation activities, results in varied firm performance. Just as the nature of innovation conditions firm innovativeness (e.g. new-to-market innovation is considered to be superior to new-to-firm innovation), so too different kinds of KM lead to the implementation of more and less sophisticated innovation strategies, thus resulting in unequal firm performance. So, which KM practices contribute to the emergence of the most sophisticated innovation strategies? How is KM, via the innovation strategies, related to firm performance? The paper is aimed at answering these questions and identifying KM practices typical of innovation strategies with varied levels of sophistication. Here, the sophistication depends on coherence (e.g. positive or negative, strong or weak) between the extent of an innovation strategy of an enterprise and the enterprise's performance indicators. Thus, the link between kinds of KM and firm performance is not proximate in the paper. Instead, innovation strategies act as mediators. For the identification of innovation strategies, CIS8 database was used. It covers 60 innovation variables across 127,674 organizations from 12 core and 19 additional sectors and from 16 European economies. The innovation variables include different KM practices as well. Two firm performance indicators were also used in the research. The methods included exploratory factor analysis and correlation analysis. At each stage, the analyses were accompanied by rigorous validity and reliability tests. In total, six innovation strategies were identified. This let to decide about which KM practices are associated with the best firm performance and vice versa. In addition, the findings let to observe and compare the sample European economies by innovation strategies utilized there. The paper is original because of mainly three aspects. First, different KM forms are interrelated with firm performance and national economic-institutional contexts. Second, impressive scope of the paper (compared to the existing literature) should be noted. And third, the paper is original in its attempt to focus on KM practices within innovation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SMEs account for over 99% of all European businesses and in recent years they have proved themselves to be the engines of economic growth, along with the main sources of new employment. Today's competitive environment calls for a dynamic, self-sustaining culture of innovation within SMEs in order for them to be better equipped to face future challenges. The paper is built on the doctoral research carried out by the paper's author, along with the author's involvement in the national research project INOVEX „Increasing the quality performances within cooperative processes in SMEs through expert systems in innovation engineering and management‟ and the research project entitled "Instrument for evaluating Romanian SMEs maturity at strategic and operational level for sustaining their performances on the long-term". For the INOVEX research, several categories of basic processes were taken into account and within each category, 92 sub-processes and 227 activity modules (categories of problems) were identified. The main objective of the paper is to provide possible directions for sustaining innovative activities within Romanian SMEs. The first section discusses the problems identified in Romanian SMEs regarding several processes selected, namely research-development and introducing large-scale innovation, processes for continuous improvement of product development activities and institutional development processes. In the second part of the paper, the main types of innovation within SMEs are emphasized, along with the factors that are most likely to be considered by SMEs within the process for innovation planning. The paper also seeks to analyze the process of improvement related to organizational processes, products, and management system of Romanian SMEs that cover the objectives for improvement defined by the organization, employees' role in the process of improvement as well as the potential rewards offered for the employees 'involvement. Based on the main constraints identified in Romanian SMEs concerning innovation-related processes along with the analysis of the framework for implementing innovative activities within SMEs, the paper intends to identify possible directions to follow by Romanian SMEs in becoming more innovation-oriented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]