It has been defined that there are numerous approaches to specification of the basic principles of innovation activities, but most of them are general, are used to illustrate development of the enterprise as a whole, and therefore they are not substantiated. Besides, there is no specified set of principles necessary for the formation of the economic mechanism of innovation activities (EMIA), that is, those that take into account economic and investment aspects of the activities. The expediency of expanding and complementing the characteristics and systematization of the innovative activities principles to build organizational and economic mechanism has been justified. This is due to the lack of clear distribution of this mechanism’s principles, which play an important role in the process of EMIA formation. The principles of the economic mechanism of innovation activities have been completed, which, in contrast to the existing ones, are the basic rules for the development of economic mechanism, functioning of business entities, norms of investment activities’ implementation and organization, regulation of innovation development, personnel behavior, the way of using innovative technologies, directions of activities improvement, development of innovation activities system management. They allow to determine the place and level of economic mechanism interactions with enterprise’s economic mechanism. Principles were divided into traditional and special ones, which promote effective management of enterprise departments, increasing innovation capacity and innovation activities due to coordination of the mechanism and interactions of its constituent subsystems, innovation activities improvement, achieving economic benefits provided by the assessment of the impact of macro-, meso- and micro-level factors, opportunities and threats of further activities. It has been determined that the proposed principles should be followed when forming economic mechanism of innovation activities precisely of industrial enterprises, because they take into account the specifics of their functioning, the level of innovation and investment potential, the possibility of conducting innovations. Traditional principles should be appropriately specified, adjusted, analyzed on the basis of the changing business needs, directions of innovation activities, objectives of economic mechanism due to the influence of market environment.