Science and innovation as factors of countries’ sustainable development management

The study analyses the science and innovation impact on the on the world countries’ sustainable development managing process. The purpose of the study is to determine the strength and direction of the scientific and innovative activity indicators’ impact: the UN Sustainable Development Goal “Industry, innovation and infrastructure” achievement level; R&D expenditures and the specific number of patents filed on the UN counties’ sustainable development level. The study’s information base was the United Nations (reports on the sustainable development management goals achievement by country – The Sustainable Development Report) materials, the World Bank statistics (R&D expenditures from countries around the world), as well as the World Intellectual Property Organization data (data on patent applications from countries around the world). The regression analysis method is used to determine the strength and direction of these indicators’ impact on sustainable development and the correlation field is used to visualise the data. In accordance with this goal, three hypotheses were formulated about the impact of each of the above variables on the UN Sustainable Development Goals index. To test these hypotheses, regression models were constructed and the determination coefficients of the obtained models were calculated. According to the results of the study, the first hypothesis about the relationship between the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 9 “Industrialization, innovation and infrastructure” and the overall level of sustainable development management in the world has been confirmed. The other two hypotheses were adjusted because the models obtained for them were not suitable for predictive purposes. It is shown that the financial resources of innovation, expressed in terms of R&D expenditures, have a much lower impact on the sustainable development managing process than intellectual and human resources, expressed in terms of the countries’ patent activity indicator. In this regard, while ensuring the countries sustainable development, special attention should be paid to the human and intellectual resources development. At the same time, financial resources of scientific and innovative activities act as a tool for the practical implementation of scientific knowledge, technologies and innovative solutions.

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