Diversification of production programs as a way to reduce the risks of high-tech enterprises in the implementation of distributed innovation projects
The paper deals with the problems of implementing large-scale innovative projects. Enterprises can invest part of their profits in the creation and development of the production of radically innovative products of a new technological mode. On the one hand, these are high-risk investments in specific assets, since there is no guarantee that other enterprises will also launch their radically innovative products (despite the fact that the products of different enterprises are complementary). On the other hand, such “opportunity investment” may represent a small fraction of enterprise resources. Then the risk of their loss is offset by the expected gain from participation in a breakthrough innovative project to create a new, much more efficient technological order (especially since in the future it will supplant the current one, and being late to participate in it is fraught with losses). The described diversification of the production programs of high-tech enterprises helps to overcome the problems of coordinating large-scale innovation projects and the high risks of participation in them by independent enterprises supplying individual components, without guarantees from a large investor, an “innovation leader”. When modeling the process of transition to a new technological paradigm, the stage identified when enterprises produce modern products, gradually accumulating capacities for promising products, the stage of joint production of both modern and promising products, and the stage of production of promising products after the disposal of fixed assets of modern production. Two scenarios are considered - centralized financing and project management, and an independent policy of enterprises diversifying their programs in the manner described above. With centralized management at the stage of modern production, all investments directed to promising production. With an independent policy of enterprises at the stage of modern production, investments distributed (diversified) between promising and modern production. The boundaries of the characteristic parameters of the functioning of high-tech enterprises are estimated, when the diversification of the programs of independent enterprises allows, without long delays and strong overspending of resources (compared to the "ideal" centralized management), to switch to a new technological order, and when it is ineffective. The dependence of the transition time to a new technological mode and overspending of resources in the distributed implementation of innovative projects on various parameters is estimated: on the share of investments in new technologies, on the proportion of the distribution of enterprise profits between dividends and investments, on the economic parameters of promising products.