University-business-government relations in the development of the institutional environment of Russian regions

Relevance. University-business-government relations drive regional innovation. Therefore, in order to stimulate innovation, a favourable institutional environment is necessary. Research objective. The article proposes an original methodology to examine regional institutional environment based on the analysis of the interactions between the government, business and universities. Methods and data. The study relies on the statistical data on 12 Russian regions for a 6-year period. The data are used to create three sets of indicators characterizing the institutional sectors 'Government', 'Business' and 'Universities'. Regions are divided into clusters and ranked according to the state of their institutional environments by calculating subindices and the integral index. Other research methods include cluster analysis and correlation regression analysis. Results. The regions were grouped according to their innovation performance: in lagging regions, the interactions between the government, business and universities are inefficient, which means that their regional institutional environment is not conducive to innovation. The opposite situation is observed in the group of leaders. We also found that interactions between the government, business and universities have a direct influence on GRP. Conclusion. For each group of regions, areas for improvement and the corresponding measures were identified. Interventions may vary in terms of intensity and government participation.