ИСТИНА

Northern territories (including the Arctic) occupy over 80% of Russian area. Development of these regions is based on ‘resource’ model, while other approaches have been ignored because of severe environmental conditions. The aim of this study was to assess an ability of northern regions to generate and diffuse innovations. The study was methodologically divided into three stages. The objective of the first and the second stage was to compare innovation capacities of northern and other Russian regions. An ability to create new knowledge is described by a number of indexes, an ability to extend and apply innovations - by a logistic function from model of innovation diffusion. This work confirmed the hypothesis of high concentration of the potential in major agglomerations and research centres, including Siberian cities: Tomsk, Novosibirsk, and Krasnoyarsk. Some arctic regions were characterized by high creative potential, but low rate of diffusion: Krasnoyarsk, Magadan, Sakha. The first fact can be explained by conservation of the Soviet scientific infrastructure and by initiative and mutual assistance of northern communities. The second fact is related to low population density and interaction. The key disadvantage of the method is in inadequate quality of Russian statistics. On the third stage, the authors identified innovation clusters in the sphere of environmental management.