Knowledge management at Ukrainian industrial enterprises in the context of innovative development

The research aimed to identify promising areas and outline problems associated with the transition of Ukrainian industrial enterprises towards advanced innovative development based on information and knowledge and to formulate recommendations for improving the knowledge management and commercialisation at these enterprises. The study used several methods for analysis, including a literature review; system, structural and statistical analyses; SWOT analysis; the inference method; and interpretation. The research efforts resulted in systemised major sources of knowledge in an enterprise and types of their utilisation. The performed analysis found the key ways to obtain and commercialise knowledge used by Ukrainian industrial enterprises. The results were compared with data of the EU countries. The analysis produced strengths and weaknesses of the existing knowledge management system used in Ukrainian enterprises. Strengths: growth in the number of enterprises producing new knowledge and implementing marketing and organisational innovations; intensified patent activity; and a rational structure of innovation-active enterprises by their size. Weaknesses: the new knowledge structure does not meet the needs of enterprises; an insignificant and unstable share of innovation-active enterprises in the total number of firms; and insignificant sales volumes of patents. The research revealed that Ukrainian enterprises had the potential ability to produce and commercialise new knowledge effectively and to use it as the basis to form, strengthen and implement relative competitive advantages, which would contribute to the innovative growth of the Ukrainian economy as a whole. Recommendations were designed for the formation of prerequisites necessary to improve the efficiency of knowledge management in the context of conditions required for the innovative development of domestic enterprises. The obtained results can be used as an information base for evaluating the system of knowledge production and commercialisation at Ukrainian enterprises to enhance the management and identify promising areas for innovative development. © 2020 Sergii Illiashenko et al., published by Sciendo 2020.