Among the main national priorities of the Russian state policy, there is obtaining competitive advantages in solving problems of global scientific and technological frontiers, as a basis for sustainable economic development. In this regard, in order to ensure the increase of financial and quantitative indicators in the scientific sphere, studies are needed on the effectiveness of national measures to support and stimulate entrepreneurial activity, including at the regional level. The relevance of the work is determined by the growing need to generalize knowledge about the role and economic dependence of small and medium-sized businesses as a basis for ensuring the sustainability of the country in the interests of scientific and technological development of regions. The research objective is to solve problems of assessing criteria for determining small entrepreneurship, taking into account fundamentally new sectors of the economy on a global scale. The scientific novelty of the study consists in providing additional arguments in favor of the theses on the need to build up the scientific and technological potential of territories. The share and contribution to the development of the entrepreneurship sphere of various countries are considered, forms of state support for small businesses in Russia are described, an approach to the concept of a regional innovation ecosystem is defined.