Internationalization of cluster initiatives in Russia: empirical evidence

In the last few years, Russia has supported the establishment of cluster initiatives to strengthen economic development, open channels for knowledge transfer, raise the national technology base, and integrate domestic manufacturing more prominently into global value chains. This paper studies 25 pilot cluster initiatives which received financial support within the national programme. The analysis shows that privately funded initiatives tend to use the cluster format as an efficient way to organize economic activities. Publicly funded cluster initiatives, in contrast, are more likely to engage in R&D partnerships with institutes in technologically advanced regions, such as Western Europe or South-East Asia, and thereby act as transfer channels to strengthen the region’s technology base. Also, industries that build on analytical knowledge are more likely to engage in partnerships than industries that use local and tacit knowledge. Still, the cluster management organizations struggle greatly to appoint adequately skilled staff and to cope with limited financial resources, as these are the biggest barriers for cluster internationalization, while cultural differences and geographical distance were of much less importance.