Leonid Gokhberg: “Regional innovation development rating is a natural next step in our research”

On 27 June, the Parlamentskaya Gazeta’s press centre hosted a round table discussion “Measuring regions’ performance: efficiency and control techniques”. One of the participants was first vice-rector, director of the NRU HSE ISSEK Leonid Gokhberg. He presented the innovation development rating of the RF regions which the Higher School of Economics was calculating for several years in a row.

Ruslan Gattarov, Vladimir Gutenev, Sergei Karginov, Leonid Gokhberg

The participants of the round table discussion included developers of various “regional” ratings and their “readers” with voting powers, in particular: Ruslan Gattarov, vice-governor of the Chelyabinsk Region; Sergei Karginov, member of the State Duma Federal Affairs and Local Self-Government Committee; Vladimir Gutenev, first deputy chairman of the State Duma Industry Committee. Igor Zuga, member of the Council of the Federation Federal Affairs, Regional Policy and Affairs of the North Committee, and Konstantin Markelov, chairman of the government of the Astrakhan Region, took part via Skype.

The agenda included the following items: 1) regional authorities’ efficiency rating developed by the Ministry of Regional Development; 2) the national rating of regions’ investment attractiveness developed by the Strategic Initiatives Agency; 3) Innovation development rating of Russian regions developed by the Higher School of Economics; and 4) governors’ efficiency rating calculated by the Civil Society Development Foundation.

“Our motherland’s strength lies in its regions, so we must actively develop the regional perspective”, stressed Vladimir Gutenev. Russian regions have different industrial and intellectual potentials, so when we try to rate them we must keep in mind how they meet “the targets set by the Government and specified in the budget”, believed the deputy. Authors of ratings must disclose their methodologies to generate trust in their results, said Mr Gutenev. After all, occasionally “the ones being rated do not agree with the marks they get”. According to him, the most important aspects of a rating were reliability and objectivity.

It’s important to develop ratings focused on the regions, noted Ruslan Gattarov, because they allow to “feel the temperature”, benchmark the region “against a certain scale”, and provide best practices milestones. However, complained the former senator, there’re too many ratings now, developing them “became too fashionable”, but not all their conclusions are objective – so the methodologies and results must be publicly discussed.

Trying to line the regions up along the arithmetic ruler would up to a point equal to setting them “head on” against each other, believed Sergei Karginov. In his opinion one should “take a single criterion and use it to judge how the region is doing”. According to Mr Karginov, “how comfortable it is to live in the region” was a good integrated criterion to serve as a rating basis .

Leonid Gokhberg presented the approach used by the HSE’s analysts who develop innovation development rating of Russian regions as a continuation and “a natural next step” of the many years of studying innovation activities in the Russian economy. The resulting rating “provides signals for the regions, helping them to find reserves to increase their efficiency”, noted first vice-rector.

Innovation activity is a complex phenomenon affected by many various factors. The HSE index is structured into four large blocks of indicators reflecting socio-economic conditions for innovation activities, the regions’ S&T potential, companies’ innovation activities as such, and the quality of innovation policy in the region.

Professor Leonid Gokhberg also spoke about transparency of the NRU HSE’s rating: “We publish under the same cover our calculations, analytic conclusions, methodology, the indicators used, all the definitions, and even raw data. If somebody doesn’t like their index value and the position in the rating, they can check it for themselves, recalculate everything. And then ask us any questions they might have”. The researchers get feedback (including via mass media) after each rating is published (the first and second ratings are available online), while regions start debates on how they could improve their innovation performance.

By Elena Gutaruk