The article continues the cycle of work on the development of a methodological complex for the comparative assessment of innovation activities in the regions of Russia. The article deals with multi-criteria optimization based on the Pareto principle. The purpose of this article is a comparative assessment of innovation processes in Russian regions. The author's methodology provides for a step-by-step determination of systems of the appropriate rank and the formation of areas of acceptable values of indicators. A characteristic feature of the method proposed in the article is the ability to evaluate innovation activities in the regions and their ranking in dynamics. Dynamic analysis of the composition of the ranks reveals the change/retention of leading and lagging regions, and the number of ranks shows the degree of differentiation of regions within the federal district by the level of innovative development. The criteria for evaluating innovation activity are the coefficients that characterize the key aspects of innovation activity in the subjects. The presented methodology contributes to the solution of a number of tasks to increase the efficiency of innovation processes at the meso-level. As a result of the assessment, the analysis of the entire set of subjects of the Russian Federation and, in particular, the regions of the Volga Federal District is given. The article identifies the leaders and outsiders of the innovation space of the Volga Federal District and the Russian Federation according to the proposed system of criteria. In general, the method of multicriteria assessment, along with traditional methods of analysis and forecasting, is an immanent tool for the study of innovation processes in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, and due to the invariance of the approach, it can be adapted to the tasks of assessment in other areas of economic activity
Keywords: region, innovation activity, multicriteria optimization, Pareto principle, effective set, rank, indicators of state assessment, structure of the compared systems