The economic analysis of the impact of grand challenges on sustainability and continuity of business entities’ activities

Abstract

Subject. The article addresses the need to develop new methodological tools for assessing threats to and opportunities of sustainable development of business entities, enabling to adequately reflect their activities in the analysis of their interaction in rapidly changing economic conditions. Objectives. The aim is to underpin a methodological approach to the formation of indicators for assessing the sustainable development of business entities in the face of grand challenges, which rests on the grouping of indicators according to the type of economic development. Methods. The study draws on resource-oriented approach, which we developed and tested in the economic analysis of sustainable development of business entities, and statistical methods. Results. Based on the methods of cognitive and resource-oriented analysis, we defined a set of basic indicators, characterizing the intellectual capital. The implementation of the methodological approach enabled to identify two baseline indicators of intellectual capital involved in the formation of a Grand Challenge, i.e. the number of computers with access to global information networks and the cost of patents and licenses for inventions, industrial designs, utility models. We developed and evaluated integrated indicators of intellectual capital to determine the possibilities of sustainable development of economic entities of the Russian Federation. Conclusions. The offered approach helps define a set of indicators of different types of capital to be included in the integrated reporting and analysis of possibilities of economic entities’ sustainable development in the face of grand challenges. The produced set of indicators is basic and may change.