Innovative Youth Entrepreneurship and Growth in Market of R&D Services : A Case Study of Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus

Youth entrepreneurship plays an important role in solving socio-economic problems: reducing unemployment by creating new jobs, training qualified personnel, etc. Young people are more risk-averse, more enterprising and adaptive. The phenomenon of youth entrepreneurship deserves closer attention from the state and society. Innovative youth entrepreneurship plays a special role as a locomotive for the development of the R&D services market. However, in the available literature, we have not found uniform approaches either to the definition of the concept of "innovative youth entrepreneurship", nor to its legislative formalization, or to the assessment of its economic results.The authors examined the evolution of concepts and practices of innovative youth entrepreneurship development (on the example of Russia and Belarus), the role of youth business in the development of the market of research services in the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus. To assess the state of existing problematic issues in the modern system of training future specialists (higher education) and identify trends in the development of innovative entrepreneurship among young people in Russia and Belarus, an online survey was conducted. As a result, it turned out that 54.1% of respondents expressed an unequivocal desire to open their own business; moreover, 31.7% of respondents still doubt their decision. The respondents chose mainly various types of services (including information technology – 20.5%) as the main types of activities that correspond to the business planned to open