Institutional and economic aspects of the generation and reproduction of intellectual potential of the enterprise

<jats:p>The article examines the problematic field of institutional support for the processes of generation and reproduction of the intellectual potential of an industrial enterprise. The author substantiates the thesis that standard neoclassical models of human capital are insufficient to explain the phenomenon of stable intellectual leadership of a firm: they ignore the role of informal rules, cognitive routines and intra-company contractual relations, which actually selectively stimulate or suppress the creative activity of agents. The concept of an "institutional intellectual rent trap" is introduced — a self-sustaining configuration of norms in which an enterprise exploits previously accumulated potential, losing the ability to breakthrough generation. Based on the synthesis of old and new institutionalism, a model of a multilevel institutional environment is proposed that differentiates management tools for the generation phase (behavioral contracts, buffering from routine control) and the reproduction phase (implicit knowledge translation systems, institutional memory). Special attention is paid to the problem of complementarity of formal and informal institutions in the context of high-tech production, as well as empirical observations at Russian industrial enterprises confirming the existence of the described traps. The work is conceptually analytical in nature, contains hypotheses for empirical verification and practical recommendations for overcoming institutional barriers to knowledge generation.</jats:p>