The article’s aim is to reveal the essence and structure of the innovative potential of the enterprises of processing and tobacco industries, analyze its components and justify the advisability and necessity of complementing it with a new component, namely a system to ensure the quality and environmental safety of food products. During the research, a series of tasks have been solved, which are related to improving the methodology of the evaluation innovative potential, in particular, the sequence, choice and number of observation objects and periods, generation of the observation matrix and average values, synthesis of individual and total estimates, of the potential of individual components and their weight values and integral estimates for individual enterprise. Based on the use statistical reports for the investigated years, a system of partial indicators was compiled and innovative potential was calculated both for individual components and the integral values for four processing enterprises in Bukovyna region. In order to overcome the misbalance and shift over a higher level of functioning based on the systematization of functional strategies and initial possibilities for the development of the enterprises (technical-and technological condition of the production, own investment possibilities and the ability of attracting outside investments), the authors justify individual models for basic strategies of the expansion of the innovative potential on each of them. Their practical implementation would contribute to overcoming the existing misbalance and expanding the innovative potential of the processing enterprises and would raise the multi-dimensional effectiveness and economic efficiency

Keywords:innovative potential, components of the innovative potential, methodology to calculate the innovative potential

The purpose of the article is caused by the emergence of new challenges for the national economy, and particularly for the agricultural sector as a result of the signing and ratification, in September 2014, of the Association Agreement EU-Ukraine. These challenges are systemic, comprehensive, extremely powerful and dangerous, so the preparation of adequate responses to them requires a transition to an innovative paradigm of businesses in the food complex in order to actively develop their innovative potential.
The study used methods such as theoretical abstraction, generalization of the essential characteristics of modern paradigms of development, structural and comparative analysis and grouping, SWOT-analysis of the internal condition and environment of food-processing companies, the hierarchy of risks by source of origin, and organizing strategies for the development of structural components of the innovative potential.
The authors justified theoretical and methodological foundations of economic transition to an innovative paradigm of development strategy of the food-processing industry. It is based on the assessment of the internal condition and existing potential for the whole enterprise and its components, the external economic environment and innovation and investment climate and, on this basis, the selection of innovative models of development. The strategy of increasing innovation potential of a business structure is based on the allocation of structural components and the use of different groups of sectoral strategies for development and to achieve balance.
This will be an innovative and technological basis for the production of food products with innovative features (new or improved properties), and corresponding to the consumers customization by needs and tastes. The authors systematized the causes that provoked the appearance of existing or potential risks, revealed their impact on the companies' development strategy and elaborated tools whose introduction and use can neutralize and overcome the brake and centrifugal effects

Keywords: innovative potential, innovation and economic paradigms, strategy of innovative development, food processing companies, risks and threats