Ukrainian Innovation Policy: The Smart Specialization Problem

The aim of the article is to reveal the place and role of smart specialization strategy as one of the relevant and central areas of modern economic policy. It is shown that in Ukraine the issue of economic essence and main goal of smart specialization policy as a form of state innovation policy remains theoretically and practically unexplored, as well as the importance of involving universities in smart specialization strategy in the context of creating basic innovations that can become the basis of the regional smart specializations. The article substantiates that the Ukrainian expert community is dominated by the perception the smart specialization strategy is the traditional sectoral economic policy, which considers innovation as a factor of increasing the competitiveness of existing industries, i.e. without much change in the technological structure of the economy or region. The article argues that the main content of the smart specialization policy should be the priority development of new high-tech sectors of the economy, industries belonging to the current and future technological paradigms. The results of studying the main development directions of the Top European innovation Universities are presented. These results testify to the close connection between the innovation Universities and the creation of basic innovations for the development of new high-tech business. The analysis showed that Ukraine not only cannot enter the European ranking of innovation Universities, but also lags far behind the total number of European patents per country. This shows that the country has in fact abandoned basic innovation competitions with Europe. The policy of smart specialization should help to correct this situation. The positive effect of such policy largely depends on the active formation of modern innovation Universities, which can create and commercialize basic innovations of the Schumpeter’s type, leading to the emergence of new high technologies