Факторы творческой активности населения в условиях инновационных вызовов (на материалах социологических опросов в России и Беларуси)

Abstract

People and their creative activity is an important factor of innovative development. However, innovative behavior of the Russians and the Belarusians at the present stage is constrained not only by economic barriers but by various other factors, i.e. qualitative characteristics of the countries’ population, social and cultural conditions, etc. In this regard, the article is aimed at analyzing the factors of innovative activity of the population of Russia and Belarus. Scientific significance is determined by summarizing the results of the joint study carried out by the Russian and Belorussian academic institutions, identifying the common features and differences in the innovative activity of countries’ citizens, and defining the factors hindering people’s creative activity. The obtained results are of practical importance for determining priority management actions to encourage population creative activity both at the territorial and the micro levels (enterprises / organizations). The study uses sociological methods (sociological surveys), statistical analysis (including statistical indicators related to the innovative development of Russia and Belarus as well as information resources of Rosstat, Belstat and Eurostat), and general scientific methods (comparison, observation, analysis, generalization, synthesis, etc.). The materials of two sociological surveys are used as an information base of the research, e.g. monitoring of the quality of population’s labor potential conducted by the Vologda Research Center of the RAS in the Vologda Oblast in 1997–2017, and the sociological survey of the Mogilev Oblast of the Republic of Belarus conducted in 2016. The study results reveal new ways to encourage the countries’ population to increase creative activity.