Integral Assessment of the Level of Innovative Development of the Railway Industry Companies

Abstract

Background: NTI Competence Center, in the direction “Technologies of Storage and Analysis of Big Data,” has significant background in the development of integral indexes: a) IQ Cities (to Ministry of Construction of the Russian Federation), b) National Index of digital development of the subjects of the Russian Federation, c) Index of readiness of industries for the introduction of artificial intelligence, d) Index of innovative development for leading domestic companies, including in the sector of air transportation and oil production. Objective: Today, innovative, scientific, and technical development is one of the key factors in maintaining the competitiveness of the railway industry in the transport services market. At the same time, innovative development is a complex and dynamically changing process, due to the high rates of development and implementation of new technologies on the level of commercial use in various tech companies. Therefore, it is advisable to use an assessment of the level of innovative development of a company in comparison with the market competitors. Today in the railway industry, there is a need to assess and constantly monitor the level of innovative development of companies. The relevance of building a single tool for assessing the level of innovative development of railway companies is due to the lack of unified and comprehensive methods for calculating such indexes in the industry and the necessary efficiency of innovative railway companies to increase their competitiveness in the transport services market. Methods: The main research methods used were bibliometric analysis, qualitative methods of information analysis and quantitative methods for the development of integral indexes (methods for standardizing indicators, methods for assigning specific weights, methods for aggregating indicators). The data for the assessment of the indicators as in 2019 were collected using available sources of information (including official reports and strategic planning documents of railway companies, scientific literature from the Scopus/Web of Science databases) and the opinions of independent industry experts. There are three groups of indicators used to form an integral assessment: - indicators for assessing the level of readiness of advanced innovative solutions and technologies (indicators are measured on a scale from 0 to 1 using the Technology Readiness Level scale, where 0 is no solution/ no supporting data; 0.5 is a solution at the development stage (TRL1-7), 0.75 is a solution at the approbation stage (TRL8), 1 is a solution at the production stage (TRL9). - binary indicators for assessing the presence or absence of the use of advanced innovative solutions and technologies (indicators are measured on a scale from 0 to 1, where 0 is no relevant functional (specific characteristic/ capability), 0.5 is possible existence with consideration of indirect factors, 1 - confirmed existence). - quantitative indicators for assessing the effectiveness and scope of innovation policy and the use of advanced innovative solutions and technologies (evaluated and ranked based on the minimum-maximum method). To aggregate these groups of indicators at the subindex level, there was calculated a subindex of the average value of the indicators. All the weights of the indicators included in one subindex are the same. Results: The scientific result of the research is the development of a unique method (structure of the indicators) for calculating the integral index of innovative development of railway companies based on the analysis of the best domestic and foreign practices and approaches to the formation of integral indexes. The method for calculating the index was successfully tested as a part of the assessment of the level of innovative development of the Russian Railways holding. Conclusion: The main result of this work is integral index that has prospects in international practice as a tool for strategic planning of the activities of railway companies to improve efficiency and optimize work processes, as well as a tool for assessing the level of dynamics of the innovative development of the industry and increasing its competitiveness in comparison with other modes of transport.