Knowledge-Intensive Business Services in Russia: 2014-2015 Crisis Aftermath

In recent years, knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) have become extremely important in the knowledge-based economy. KIBS concentrate a well-qualified workforce and create high levels of value-added services, serve as a driver for the innovation-based development of many countries [Santos-Vijande et al., 2013]. However, the growth rates of this sector in Russia considerably fell after the 2008 crisis; some KIBS-industries could not even reach pre-crisis volumes of production and the share of this sector in GDP significantly declined [Berezin, Doroshenko, 2015]. The crisis trends in Russian economy at the end of 2014 and at the beginning of 2015 had a strong negative impact on KIBS. We show that the share of companies with decreasing revenues has dramatically grown in all industries. The demand side has also changed: the client base is now more unstable and customers more regularly fail to fulfill contract obligations. An industry analysis reveals significant divergences in the rates and trajectories for development of Russian KIBS industries. However, the sector heterogeneity might be also found in KIBS of other countries. The paper is based on both survey of 656 Russian KIBS producers and in-depth interviews with 24 leading KIBS experts.