How CEO's Characteristics Affect the Innovative Activity of Russian Firms

The author of this paper pursued the goal of identifying the personal and professional traits of CEOs of companies that can affect the company's innovations. He reviewed a number of works by both foreign and Russian researchers and conducted his own empirical study of the issue using data from the survey of Competitiveness of Russian Industrial Enterprises held in 2014 and 2018. As a result of the work carried out on the basis of publications of other authors on this issue, the author was able to identify that the most significant characteristics of the executive managers of companies for innovation are gender, age, specific work experience, past work experience, level of education and self-confidence. Using the example of Russian companies, the author identified significant differences in the innovation activity of companies between the periods in question, and was able to establish which characteristics of executive managers of companies and under what conditions are most favorable for increasing innovation activity: gender and type of participation in the company's ownership, as well as size market, innovative capacity of the industry, the size of the company and its profitability.