TITLE:
Innovation Clusters as an Institutional Platform for Russia’s Technological Sovereignty
AUTHORS:
Dmitry Napolskikh
KEYWORDS:
Innovation Clusters, Technological Sovereignty, Institutional Platform, Innovation Policy, Industrial Policy, Regional Development, Global Value Chains
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.14 No.3,
March
31,
2026
ABSTRACT: Amidst escalating geo-economic fragmentation, sanctions pressure, and constrained access to foreign technology, ensuring technological sovereignty has become a systemic imperative for the Russian Federation. The contemporary stage of global economic development is marked by a deepening of scientific and technological specialization alongside an increasing vulnerability of national economies to ruptures in global value chains. This context elevates the significance of institutional frameworks for innovation that can concentrate resources, stabilize technological pathways, and sustain critical domestic competencies. This article posits innovation clusters as a pivotal institutional platform, integrating the scientific, technological, productive, investment, and human capital necessary to forge and uphold Russia’s technological sovereignty. The research provides a comprehensive analysis of the role of innovation clusters in ensuring technological independence by synthesizing institutional, evolutionary, and systemic approaches, analyzing statistical data, and reviewing Russian and international cluster development practices. Methodologically, it employs institutional, comparative, and statistical analysis, supplemented by elements of comparative research. The analysis demonstrates that while innovation clusters serve as a vital mechanism for orchestrating science-business-state interaction within a “triple helix” model, their potential in Russia remains underutilized due to institutional fragmentation, scarce long-term financing, and deficient horizontal linkages. The article advances the concept of a “sovereign innovation cluster”—a deliberately constructed institutional complex oriented toward establishing a closed or controlled national cycle for developing critical technologies.