In the context of the increasing competitiveness of the scientific and educational environment, the emergence of parallel educational systems, and the instability of budgetary spending on education and science, university administrators are faced with the task of finding a balance between the commercial and academic needs of universities. For Russian universities, the issues of diversifying financing and increasing investment activity are of particular relevance. This issue is crucial for entrepreneurial universities, which face the acute problem of resource provision for scientific and engineering problems. This encourages universities focused on applied problem-oriented research and commercialization of results to expand and diversify their funding sources, including through the implementation of new investment strategies.
This study aimed to analyze the volumes and models of foreign universities’ investment activities and assess the prospects for reproducing such investment practices in Russian universities.
It is shown that leading foreign universities successfully combines scientific, educational, and innovative activities with investment while using a wide range of tools and professional management companies. In the last decade (2011–2020), they have been seen as participants in mergers and acquisitions, the objects of which are most often university startups. As a result, universities have high incomes, new strategic partners, and the geography of investors is expanding.
It is noted that most domestic university endowment funds have insufficient funds for investment activities, which makes it expedient to create a University Fund Fund as a new financial instrument for the development of academic entrepreneurship in the country’s regions.

The article proposes a conceptual model for assessing the technological readiness and the potential of a R&D project at the early stages of its development (TPRA – Technology Project Readiness Assessment). The proposed model will allow to assess the technological readiness of the scientific and technological projects, the commercial potential of their results, the possibility of participation of the results of projects in the transfer of technologies, the possibility of using the results obtained as a scientific and technical groundwork, as well as the risks of nonfulfillment of projects within the framework of a single tool. The results that can be obtained in the assessment process can be used to improve the efficiency of planning and implementation of R&D in the institutions for innovative development, as well as in corporations and organizations that invest in R&D processes.

The work aims are to study the concept of a business ecosystem as a new stage in the life cycle of an organization. At the same time, there is an attempt to establish the process of forming a business ecosystem as an element that is part of the “intellectual management” of managing an organization. One of the main thoughts is that all used classifications of life cycles, namely the models of L. Danko, R. Daft, I. Adisis, and L. Greiner, have similar stages. Based on the analysis of the history of Yandex, it was found that the formation of its own business ecosystem allows avoiding falling into the “extinction” stage, since the entire formation process is accompanied by the constant activity of the organization in different directions. The importance of digitalization of business before the transition to the formation of its business ecosystem, and the need for at least one completed cycle, or its main part, with the consolidation of the company’s key product in the market, was emphasized. The material mainly uses the historical and abstract-logical research method with methods of analysis and synthesis.

The problem of staffing in innovation management is one of the main resources of the modern Russian economy. Based on the data of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia, in-depth interviews with representatives of large companies, and government authorities, the authors attempted to identify the most relevant and popular approaches to solving the problem of staffing the venture capital industry in the corporate sector. The article defines the general vector of development of the corporate venture capital sector in Russia, analyzes the contribution of universities and large companies to the creation of a talent pool. It is concluded that universities do not cover the need for training highly qualified personnel for innovation management, while large companies are building up competencies in the field, using and using effective training tools for working with venture projects.

The main vectors of the development of an interdisciplinary methodology for studying the problem of living systems in the context of the implementation of the concept of digitalization of the state are considered. As a result of the research, it is established that the main directions of this development are the development and implementation of fundamental, exploratory and applied research of various living systems aimed at improving the efficiency of their functioning against the background of preserving the health and prolonging the longevity of the country’s population.