Improvement of institutional provision of development and implementation of regional cluster policy

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Regional cluster policy is, as it is generally accepted, a critically important factor of a sustainable development of the regional economy and territorial units being its part. At the same time the notion of the cluster policy itself is extremely imprecise what creates problems at the assessment attempts of the influence and efficiency of its various tools what makes the comparative analysis of forms and effects of such © Sheykin D.A., 2018

a policy in different countries and regions of the world complicated.

The most discussed issue is the choice of a specific type of the cluster policy taking into account its resources and limitations and also the previous types of development (“path dependence”). The space for the choice of such variants is a multidimensional continuum. At the same moment one of its dimensions is the degree of the government participation in the implementation of the cluster policy of a region (from an “extra soft” creation of favourable conditions for cluster formation to a directive creation of the clusters “top down”).

All the variants of the regional cluster policy are discussable and have the potential for a successful use and that’s why they should not be rejected by the regional authorities according to some (for instance, ideological) considerations. In particular the cluster policy which is often criticized is the policy of cluster creation under the governmental control (or the so called approach “top down”) that has reliable examples of its efficiency. Thus, it was used in France at the creation of the cluster Sophia Antipolis which is located not far from Niece and which is one of the most successful technology intensive clusters of the European Union. As S. Longe emphasized, the variety is a key characteristics of a cluster. That’s why even in the territory of one region various forms of the cluster organization can appear [11, p. 21]. In many aspects it depends on the specificity and the history of creation of pro cluster nets. That’s why the information about them and the cooperation with them are extremely important types of government influence on the clusters at the earliest stage of formation.

From the point of view of the institutional approach the regional cluster policy is a significant factor of the overcoming of the effect of a “path dependence” in the cluster creation in the regional economy in the whole. The generation and the development of regional clusters depend on numerous factors which appear in an evolutionary way and which form a combination of factors contributing to the success of the cluster initiative. The combination of the factors of success includes the availability of the universities with strong scientific schools and the presence of the political will and, what is more important, the experience of the cooperation in the innovation sphere of regional authorities, availability of a technology intensive business and the existence of the partnership business culture, regional authorities and so on. Practically all these factors cannot be created “from zero”. They imply a long, step by step way development by means of trial and error method. That’s why the meaning of the effect of the “path dependence” is extremely important in the regional cluster policy.

According to the opinion of numerous experts the generation of a cluster is possible only in the situation when in the regional economy a “window of local opportunities” appears i.e. this is in principle unmanageable, stochastic (unpredictable) event which can be explained only retrospectively. That’s why the main part of the success stories of clusters in some regions of the world do not have a potential for use in other regions of the world due to a critical value of a random factor and historically appeared events.

Many scientists use for the cluster denomination the term “black swan” which was introduced by N. Taleb and which denotes an improbable event with extremely powerful effects [12, p. 4]. Thereby the principal opportunity to forecast the appearance of a cluster in any region is emphasized and consequently a weak role of a specialized cluster policy in this process is postulated. In contrast the institutional approach also studies the generation of a “windows of opportunities” and the development of regional clusters as principally managed (or at least partially) processes and it also studies the process itself of the management of the regional cluster policy with the creation of an optimal structure of institutes which create a necessary motivation for the agents of cluster development. However the questions about how and under which conditions these institutes are created and also by which factors their coevolution is driven are still remaining extremely discussible [5, p. 10].

Due to the popularity of a cluster program practically all the countries allocate significant government resources for the creation of the infrastructure for the implementation of cluster initiatives and projects including business incubators, business accelerators and so on. It is with the creation of a physical (material) infrastructure that the encouragement of the innovation in regional economies is connected. At the same time the secondary attention is paid to the institutional environment including the system of motives and encouragements for the clusters’ creation not only as property and infrastructure complexes but also as the nets of an intensive collaboration. It is the intensity of relations and interactions (communicative, cooperation focused, research, project and others) within the cluster which is a critically important factor of its success at all stages of life cycle. However very few Russian and foreign regional clusters can be characterized as the nets of intensively interacting partners. However for the increase of the intensity of net interactions the specialized tools of regional cluster policy are needed.

Within the regional cluster policy it is important to take into account that the source of cluster growth is a local cooperation but it is also necessary to encourage also the cluster internationalization. Besides it is expected to be done not only as an entry into foreign markets but also as an integration into the “chains” in international nets and collaborations. That’s why the clusters should not be focused on the cooperation within the region of its location (as it is established de facto by the legislation) and instead the conditions for the involvement into international projects should be created. At the initial stage this can be naturally the projects of a research character and of the experience exchange but in the course of the experience accumulation of the internationalization the main emphasize will move to production and investment projects.

Due to the prospect of the internationalization and due to its incorporation into global chains of the value creation a serious attention should be paid to the policy of corporative social responsibility and in total, to the process which some researchers entitle “social upgrading” [16, p. 11]. In detail it is spoken about labour, social and ecological aspects of the responsibility of a regional cluster before a local community.

In labour aspect it is connected with the observance of the rights of workers in the limits set by the law, i.e. about the serious obligations in the sphere of labour policy. It is spoken in a particular about the additional social guarantees (full medical examination, reimbursement of the expenditures on kindergartens or training in a gym), prevention of salary underestimation and excessive exploitation and so on. In the ecological sphere this process implies not only the growth of threshold values of the emissions polluting the atmosphere but also the realization by the cluster participants of voluntary initiatives connected with the sponsorship of ecological events, introduction of “green offices” and so on. In social aspect it is spoken about social actions, charity, patronship and in a broader sense about an active participation in the life of a local community.

The cluster development of the regional economy should be integrated into a broader paradigm of the sustainable development. The sustainability and competitiveness should not be seen as alternative or opposed one to another. Instead a holistic, systematic thinking which studies the development of the clusters as “points” and “zones” of growth of a regional economic space from the point of view of its sustainability or the harmonization of economic, social and ecological spheres of the regional economy is needed. The clusters should not “break” the economic space, should not increase the inequality and divide all the economic agents into “winners” and “losers”. A new paradigm of competitive cooperation or in other words of a collaborative competition becomes necessary [20, p. 409]. It should be directed on the development of collaboration advantages of the regional economy which creates the potential for the attraction of new companies, investors, tourists, workers, students and inhabitants.

Within the institutional approach to the regional cluster policy two frame variants which are founded correspondingly on neoclassical and evolutionary paradigm are usually identified (tab. 1).

Moreover in the recent research a hypothesis is tested. It says that the neoclassical and evolutionary approaches to innovation policy are antagonistic and convergent ones. Even in theoretical discussions the radical opposition of the neoclassical theory and the evolutionary economics as mainstream (dominating

Table 1

Neoclassical and evolutionary version of institutional support policy of regional clusters

Note. Made on the basis: [7; 14].

scientific direction) and its opposition like heterodoxy (“heretic” direction denying the main stream) is changed to a general understanding of common and complementary traits of the theories which are very often united and integrated.

One of the main directions of the use of the institutional approach to the development of the regional cluster policy is the policy on the basis of the revelation and overcoming of the institutional defects of a cluster. Such defects are numerous and for their description quite inaccurate and poorly structured terminology is used, in particular such terms as institutional “failures”, “traps”, “mutations”, “dysfunctions”, “inefficiencies” and so on. At the same time the given terms have exceptionally qualitative, imaginary and descriptive character which implies an expert assessment as a basic method of their diagnostics. However such a situation is typical for the analysis of any complicated system. In its boundaries the value of expert knowledge grows directly and proportionally to the increase of the complicatedness of the studied system. The empirical base for the assessment which is suggested by the first specialists in the sphere of institutional defects of cluster are deep interviews with the participants [18].

The isolation of a block of analytical and regulative steps which are connected with institutional defects of clusters within the structure of the regional cluster policy in our opinion will allow introducing the institutional factors of success (failure) of the clusters into the focus of the attention of experts, politicians, scientists and cluster managers. In case of the implementation of the regional policy on the basis of the identification and overcoming of institutional defects of clusters the growth of institutional density of the clustering economic space and the increase of the activity of the social capital creation of the participants of the regional clusters can be surely forecasted.

Within the conceptual frame of the construction of a defect focused cluster policy it is suggested to use the approach of the researchers of the theory of institutional anomalies who create for the moment the most complete systematization of various abnormal forms of economic institutes and methods to their counteraction [6]. At the same time the given frame approach is suggested for adaptation to the cluster specificity. The term “defect” is seen as a generalizing one in respect to all negative forms, conditions, processes of cluster institutes changes and external institutional cluster environment. At the same time an important moment which differentiates the author’s approach from an alternative one is the principal attention first of all to internal cluster institutes as the researchers mainly include institutional “failures” of clusters with external institutes which reflect the quality of legal environment, investment climate and so on [6; 10; 19, p. 18–19].

The analytical stage of a defect oriented cluster policy of a region implies a selection of empirical information about the existing clusters in the territory of a region by means of interviews and (what is less preferable) of the survey of the participants for the identification of institutional defects. Such defects can be divided into five large groups. The normative defects deal with various forms of the manifestation of imperfection, misbalanced character, inefficiency of formal and informal norms acting within a cluster. They create quite a large range from an institutional “vacuum” i.e. practically complete absence of behavioural norms what is mainly typical of newly created “top down” clusters to various “lacunas” and “blanks” in the legal sphere, inaccurateness of existing norms, heteronomy (combination of various norms, for instance, encouraging the innovative and imitative conduct of cluster participants) and so on. The functional defects are presented by institutional dysfunctions [21] (functional disturbance lowering the level of its indices below the accessible limits), “failures” and imperfectness of market and administrative (government) mechanisms [1; 4], institutional “traps” [17] (stable inefficiencies engendered by a negative combination of a number of institutional factors and so on).

In its turn the structural defects can be presented by negative models of relations and counteractions of cluster participants which are connected with “parasitism” (hidden exploitation of partners), camouflage (covering of the opportunistic activity in respect of cluster interests), illegal schemes and so on. The mental defects deal with destructive changes of cognitive models of cluster participants including their convictions, choice models, approaches to the decision making and other elements of corporative cluster culture. The environmental defects are thought to be a large number of dysfunctions of the external institutional environment of a cluster. Schematically the main stages (analytical, diagnostic, strategic and managerial) of the implementation of defect focused institutional cluster policy of a region are presented in Figure 1.

The regional cluster policy under modern conditions is becoming considerably complicated as it reflects both the sophistication of a

Identification of institutional defects of regional clusters		Determination of the causality of institutional defects of regional clusters		Selection of the counteraction measures to institutional defects of regional clusters

• 1.    Normative (institutional “vacuum”, “blanks”, “holes”, incorrectness, heteronomy, absence of formal characterization and so on).

• 2.    Functional (institutional dysfunctions, “failures”, deformations, “traps”, collapse and so on).

• 3.    Structural (institutional “parasitism”, hybridization, negative convergence, camouflage, genevisation and so on).

• 4.    Mental (destructive values, stereotypes, models of decision making).

• 5.    Environmental (defects of institutional environment)

• 1.    Evolutionary (in the result of the effect of “path dependence”. They are “traumas” of institutes, mutations, institutional “sclerosis” and so on).

• 2.    Transplantation (as a result of copying the best practices and the institutes of other regions and countries “atrophy”, rejection and conflict of institutes).

• 3.    Manageable (as a result of targeted actions of the subjects – “seizure” of institutes, non targeted use, manipulation, “subjection”).

• 4.    Mixed ones

• 1.    Gradualist, shocking.

• 2.    Restrictive, constructive.

• 3.    Formalized, non formalized.

• 4.    Technological, institutional, organizational, informational.

• 5.    Preventive, processing, compensating.

• 6.    Administrative, market, social, combined

Policy implementation

• 1.    Development of a road map.

• 2.    Management by realization.

• 3.    Monitoring of post defect manifestations.

• 4.    Introduction of correcting changes

Fig. 1. Stages of the implementation of a defect focused institutional policy in the cluster fromation Note . Made by the author.

representative (average) cluster and the cluster structure of a region. It can be spoken about the transfer to a new model of cluster policy of the regions which is based on three key components: inter industrial approach within which the clusters are created as structures diversified in the industrial aspect including enterprises and organization of various industries belonging to different industries; convergent (polytechnological) industry which is connected with the integration in the partner cluster working in different technological areas for the response to the challenges which the economy and society face; thematic (platform) approach in compliance with which the clusters are created as multi subject structures of an open type uniting a wide number of stakeholders around a common issue on which the chain of its value creation is based. Besides an inseparable part of regional cluster policy should become a defect focused approach implying a constant identification and removal of institutional defects of cluster development (fig. 2).

In this respect it is indispensable to use the stake holder definition of the regional cluster policy. Starting from the papers of the leading scientists which think unacceptable to reduce the cluster policy only to a number of measures and tools realized by the government [3; 8] and, consequently, the author’s definition of the regional cluster policy can be suggested.

Regional cluster policy presents a wide array of interrelated tools and actions realized by the state and stake holders of the clusters (cluster initiatives as well) directed to the encouragement of all types of cluster creation in the regional economy and to the support of cluster projects which are being implemented. Under such a definition the stake holders of a cluster are involved into the development and the realization of the regional policy together with the state (regional authorities) which mainly implement the coordination and mediation (prevention and conflict resolution) functions.

The development and the implementation of the regional cluster policy is a multi stage and a cyclical process. Meanwhile among scientists and experts there is no clear understanding of the optimal choice of the stages. A good example are the results of a detailed analysis of the stages of the cluster policy at the regional level carried out by A. Konstantinova in her dissertation. The researcher found 59 stages suggested by other authors [9, p. 78–82]. They are combined in the thesis in various ways and give grounds to scholastic discussions. In our opinion for practical purposes a more compact structure of the stages of the regional cluster policy is needed. Thus the author’s variant is presented in Table 2 (including new and modern tools typical of specific stages).

Traditional cluster policy of a region

Mono industrial approach

Creation of clusters on the basis of one industry

Mono technological approach

Creation of clusters on the basis of the enterprises of the same technological specialization

New cluster policy of a region

Inter industrial approach	Thematic (platform) approach	Convergent approach
Creation of clusters	Creation of open multi subject	Creation of clusters on
on the basis of enterprises	clusters on the basis	the basis of enterprises
of various industries	of the common topic	from various

Defect focused approach technological areas for the response to “big challenges” to the society

Fig. 2. Directions of the development of the regional cluster policy Note . Made by the author.

Table 2

Multi stage logics of the development and the implementation of regional cluster policy

Stages of regional cluster policy	Tools
1. Initiation stage
1.1. Creation of a net and a communicative area (with functions of online and off line communication) for potential cluster participants and inter cluster projects including the representatives of civil society	Crowd sourcing
1.2. Coordination of the concept of the cluster development of the regional economy by the main stake holders including the advantages and risks for the region (vision, mission, spillover effect)	CEO-to-CEO interview
1.3. Forecasting and creation of a frame strategy of the cluster development of the regional economy	Foresight, strategic panel
2. Analytical stage
2.1. Deep analysis of potential and cluster creation prospects of the regional economy with the use of quantitative and qualitative methods	Expert sessions
2.2. Assessment of unique resources, dynamic talents and key competences of a region	Resource analysis
2.3. Analysis of institutional density of the regional economy and specific clusters (cluster initiatives and projects)	Institutional analysis
2.4. Identification of cluster initiatives and regional projects	Crowd sourcing
2.5. Identification of pro cluster nets in the regional economy	Crowd sourcing
2.6. Assessment of the existing clusters	Expert sessions
2.7. Risks’ analysis of cluster projects	Risk analysis
3. Strategic stage
3.1. Selection of priority clusters (cluster projects) and the provision of the transparency of the decision making	Strategic panels
3.2. Coordination of programs of cluster development of a region	Round table discussion
3.3.    Creation of a pack of regional strategies in key directions of the cluster development including: 3.3.1.    Development of resource focused strategies of cluster development (strategies of staff training for clusters, technological development, energy efficiency). 3.3.2.    Development of the strategy of cluster internationalization. 3.3.3.    Development of marketing and branding strategy of regional clusters	Expert sessions
3.4. Creation of informational and analytical system of the monitoring of the cluster development of the regional economy including subjective and objective indicators for various groups of stake holders	Expert sessions
3.5. Establishment of the regional organization coordinator of the cluster development	Open contest
4. Managerial stage
4.1. Monitoring of the cluster development of the region with the involvement of various types of stake holders	Expert sessions
4.2. Discussion of the monitoring of results with key stake holders and experts for the development of correction recommendations	Conference, workshop
4.3. Analysis of institutional defects of regional clusters and the development of a system of measures for their neutralization	Expert sessions
4.4. Development and involvement of external organizations and nets into clusters	–
4.5. Increase of the visibility of a cluster region in the national data bases and the integration into national cluster nets	–

Note . Made by the author.

The most general universal recommendations in the institutional provision of the regional cluster policy in the regions of the Russian Federation are as follows:

• 1.    Active introduction of the system “Open government” into the practice of the strategic planning of the regional development. The model of an open government represents a system of the institutes providing an interactive interaction of the executive authorities of the region with the local community by means of the involvement of local stake holders into the regional management and complete transparency of the official information of all regional authorities. One of innovative tools of an open government is crowd sourcing i.e. public collection of suggestions for strategies and regional projects by means of Internet technologies. But the model of an open government is not limited by specific tools and is not reduced to crowd sourcing but also to public councils at the regional authorities or to the involvement of experts and the general public into the discussion of decisions in the form of a public hearing. The idea of the general public is an integrated use of one or another tool at a complete sharing of values of this approach in the comprehension by regional authorities of the productivity of the cooperation with stake holders at their definitive complexity.

• 2.    Increase of the institutional density of clusters including the creation of prerequisites for the attraction into clusters of various stakeholders with sufficient resources for partnership; activation of the interaction of stake holders (in the form of networking, collaborations, communications, event organization, projects and so on); support of cluster leaders and their teams, minimization of opportunism risk and creation of the confidence atmosphere; creation of common mental models including the idea of the future (in the result of a foresight session) shared by the participants and the agreed frame strategy of development.

• 3.    Encouragement of a multi subject approach and a variety of the subjects of regional clusters with a special attention to the coordination of their interests, competences, routines, organizational cultures and strategies. The programs of a practically focused training of stake holders are obligatory. In particular a considerable potential has the approach “learning in action” which implies the integration of the theory, real practice and reflexion (within the frame “think-act-reflect”) with the participation of innovation experts and mentors or professional coaches (business coaches) which will help the participants of cluster projects create the necessary skills of team work.

• 4.    Creation of social and net base of the cluster duet with a special emphasis on the activation of an inter cluster mobility and inter cluster interaction what will contribute to the cluster strengthening in the regional business and social environment and also the creation of the motives for an active integration into business and social nets of a region.

• 5.    Cosideration of the necessity of the variety of cluster institutes as the hybrid nature of clusters objectively implies the necessity of a hybrid policy of their regulation connected with the coordination of institutes of various types.

• 6.    Consideration of a special role of mental institutes modernization including the introduction into the collective consciousness of regional authorities and experts of a cluster focused paradigm of the regional development, shift of the emphasis from competitive on collaborative advantages of a region; rejection of industrial and mono technological approaches in favour of inter industrial / platform (thematic) and convergent (connected with “big challenges” in a region) approach; development of a common language of the dialogue with stake holders (general terminology, presentation and expectations from the cluster initiative).

• 7.    Account of multi stage, itinerary and multi variant nature of institutional development of clusters what implies to a greater extent the emphasis on the combination of various approaches rather than on their opposition and a serious choice in favour of an only good option. In particular within the regional cluster policy development it is indispensable to overcome the existing confrontation of the conception “transplantation” and “raising” of institutes as in reality the cluster institutes are copied from other clusters (national and foreign) as the best practices and as the ideas used by the cluster participants in the course of their informal interactions.

• 8.    Consideration of the importance of cluster bifurcations at the development of the strategies of regional cluster development including the bifurcations of adaptive (“over focus” in the maturity phase), transformational (return from the maturity phase to the growth phase) and the modernization (return from the stagnation phase to the growth phase) type character what implies the necessity of the implementation of specific regulatory impacts in the bifurcation points.

• 9.    Consideration of the importance of pre cluster and post cluster stage development of a cluster what implies correspondingly the creation of conditions for the development of protocluster nets (including the creation of places for the communication and

• 10.    Development of specific approaches to the regulation and support of potential, growing and mature clusters. In particular a considerable (if not the dominant) part of cluster participants in the course of surveys speaks about the appearance of serious challenges connected with the development of a cluster after the finishing of financial support. That’s why the specific stage and specific (taking into account the specificity of every stage of cluster’s life cycle) mechanisms and measures of support. It is worth speaking also about an evolutionary complication of the regional cluster policy from the support of various cluster initiatives and projects to the format of the coordination of inter cluster interactions and encouragement of inter regional cluster cooperation.

• 11.    Realization of an encouraging policy of support on the basis of the competitive search of projects of development of small and medium-sized clusters in the sphere of services with the priority of clusters in creative and cultural industries which have the most considerable prospects under the conditions of a post industrial economy.

• 12.    Collection of relevant information (far beyond industrial and statistical data) about clusters, cluster projects and initiatives and mapping of regional clusters.

• 13.    Development of a marketing strategy, policy in the sphere of brending and identity strengthening of cluster participants including the early stages of their development. A special attention is paid to media policy, support of a constant PR activity and to its transfer to an informal character of the narration about the cluster, its participants and their achievements.

• 14.    Creation of specialized bodies for cluster development including the regional council for cluster policy, regional cluster net, private regional institute coordinator, managers’ club, cluster facilitators and so on.

• 15.    Organization of annual conference in cluster development with the participation of main stake holder groups and constantly functioning its organizational committee having the function of interview taking in the frame “CEO-to-CEO”, identification of key regional needs, organization of sample groups in cluster development problems, support of analytical reports an so on.

• 16.    Anticipation beyond an organizational structure of the clusters, the development of their functional structure describing the key organizational roles emphasizing at the same time the GR

networking) and an efficient use of cluster heritage including its “reincarnation”.

coordinators, social entrepreneurs, marketing executives and specifically the regional clusters’ ambassadors.

The regional cluster policy is one of new directions of the regional strategy creation. The regional strategy creation or strategizing implies here a strategic planning and management of a long term development of the economic system of a region. In this sense the cluster policy is “embedded” into a wider system of strategizing and is specifically adjusted to its changes. At the modern stage the creation the regional cluster policy takes place under the conditions of the change of the paradigm of strategy creation of the regions.

In general the regional strategy creation had a long history the main vector of which is redirected from the comprehension of other regions as neutral elements of environment and their rethinking as active agents. The model of a competitive federalism which was used in the USA most vividly and became an example for many countries of federative type all around the world was based on the encouragement of the competition between the regions for mobile resources by means of the creation of favourable conditions (rules, infrastructure and so on). Within the mentioned pattern the regions competed between themselves for investments (companies from other regions), new inhabitants, school graduates, tourists, headquarters of international organizations and so on. At the same time “regional and local authorities sell firms and population which are situated in their territory specific public goods (law and order, infrastructure, social expenditures) in return of collected taxes which are in its turn prices paid by the consumers of the services” [15, p. 124].

Under the condition of globalization when the mobility of numerous resources has got a transborder character the level of inter regional competition has grown more as “the search of talented workers, advantageous conditions and access to new markets included even small towns into the area of visibility of the radars of big corporations” [2, p. 9]. The regions started using for the strengthening of their competitive advantages such non standard measures like marketing and branding having made them a part of their strategies. The competition of the cities and the regions for the right of holding in its territory of mega events (largest sports competitions, cultural, public and business forums and so on) became widely spread. Such mega events on the one hand are connected with investments into the modernization of territorial infrastructure and on the other hand they attract visitors and tourists. Besides the experience of the organization and holding a mega event allows having the right for similar events.

At the same time the domination of competitive strategies in the regional relations has led to a bigger manifestation of weak points of competitive federalism. The strategy creation through the prism of exceptionally competitive advantages and competitive fight leads to “economic wars” of the regions leading to a transfer of mobile resources from one territory to another but for the economy in the whole it is a so called “game with a zero sum” in which the movement of resources in the system does not lead to the increase of their volume and is physically expressed in the distribution of existing resources. Besides this distribution itself is connected with the expenditures as it does not add to the national wealth but also deals with losses of government and private resources. It is worth agreeing with the opinion that the “aspiration of regions and cities to win a competitive fight at any cost is not always effective” [23, p. 89]. This is evidenced by numerous explicit examples. Thus, a number of cities which hosted the Olympic games (Nagano, 1998; Salt Lake City, 2002; Vancouver, 2010) fell into a deep recession and were forced to reduce numerous socially important budget expenditures for the servicing of the so called “white elephants” [13] or the infrastructural objects which are not used after a mega event and have at the same time considerable maintenance costs.

The realization of a competitive focusing of regional strategies encourages our scientists for the suggestions of alternative approaches in which the emphasis is shifted on the cooperation, partnership, collaboration. Thus S. Vazhenin and I. Vazhenina suggest the conception of a competitive cooperation (when using the term of R. Nurde) of the regions. It is based on a quite well known idea about the coordination within the strategies of regional development of the competition in some areas and the development of cooperation in some other spheres: “The joining of advantages of the cooperation with the profits from the competition under such a context looks quite attractive” [13].

Sometimes the researchers use a Russian term “coo-petition” (cooperation plus competition) which suggests principally rejecting a strong contradiction and cooperation by means of transferring the strategy of joining the resources and the efforts of the regions leaders and outsiders against the competitors of a higher level (international and global ones). It is interesting that a specialized suggestion of the introduction of the principle of “cooperation plus competition” into the strategy creation of the regions is the project of a tourist mega cluster in the Western and Eastern Siberia and it is suggested to include into it 13 regions of the Russian Federation.

However the conception of the international competitive cooperation and copetition (coo-petition) are worth studying as transitory ones which reflect the transition period from the model of an economic war of the regions for the attraction of mobile resources from other regions to the model of the business development into its territory and the creation of territorial and connected resources [24, p. 71]. Such resource of an immobile type which cannot be transferred into the territory of another region are first of all confidence, culture of cooperation, creativity, innovation, solidarity and so on [22]. For this it is necessary to develop the collaborative advantages by means of creation of encouragements for the companies which invest into local intangible resources. As a result the clusters of a competitive type are inevitably replaced by the clusters of a new (competitive and cooperative) type. Their specificity consists in the fact that being founded on the relations of territorial closeness and making long term investments (for instance, investing the funds into the joint programs with local higher educational institutions, the programs of the staff training according to the model of the “learning in action”, program of research projects of regional scientists, programs of students’ startup support and so on). Such clusters are open for the cooperation with the organizations, nets and clusters from other regions or even countries in the format of an “open cluster” or numerous projects which go beyond the territory of the region but at the same time the main intangible assets are focused in the region of location.

The regional cluster policy needs to be more varied. The federal objectives are unclear and this situation pushes the regions to the creation of extra powerful innovation clusters for the participation in the contest of the federal support. Besides only the clusters of production industries are emphasized. However nevertheless in the long term prospect the small and medium sized clusters remain important including the services sphere especially in creative and cultural industries.