Information economy: management of educational, innovation, and research determinants

Abstract

A global trend of economic development is the transition to the formation of a new economic paradigm – the information economy. Ability to generate knowledge and innovation is a prerequisite for improving the competitiveness of the country and its regions; as well, it determines the pace of their social and economic development. In this context, the need to determine the levels of the development of the information economy and its structural components (educational, research and innovation) in the regions of the country is actualized. The purpose of the article is to develop and test a methodological toolkit for assessing the development of the information economy in terms of its structural components, that will allow for the formation of regional clusters by the intensity of educational, innovation and research components, and to identify priority vectors for stimulating the development of the information economy at the macro- and meso-economic levels. When developing methodological tools, the authors proceeded from existing methodological approaches in the world, the possibility of adapting them to national specifics, as well as the potential of statistical bases. In order to cluster the regions of Ukraine by the development level of educational, innovation and research components of the information economy, the k-means algorithm is used. The conducted cluster analysis showed that processes of the formation of the information economy in Ukraine are developing unevenly and are in the stage of formation. More regions of the state fall into the cluster of problematic regions with low levels of the development of educational, innovation and research components; leadership in the development level of the information economy is demonstrated by Kharkiv region, assigned to the cluster of regions with the intensive development of the information economy; in addition, a cluster of perspective regions with the level of the moderate development of the information economy is highlighted. The research made it possible to find out the main problems and identify areas of regional imbalances in the development of the information economy, including in terms of its structural components. In conclusions, the authors proposed directions to improve the approaches to the government control of the processes of the information economy evolvement, based on specific features of the regions, their smart specialization, actual capacities and the achieved level of the development of the information economy components.