Kuzbass Economy: Regional Digital Platforms as a Modernization Strategy
A digital transformation strategy enables companies to build competitive advantages by improving interaction with their consumers and suppliers, and entering new markets. However, the creation of own trading platform by regional companies is not always economically effective. In this regard, it is important to establish digital platforms at the regional level with support from the region, in which several companies would participate. Such platforms will be able to compete more successfully not only with corporate platforms of large companies, but also with such platforms as Amazon and AliExpress. The strategic initiative for the development of regional digital platforms is primarily aimed at innovative companies, which promote their products to end users (BtC). However, regional platforms can serve different markets and different industries, including promotion of industrial products (BtB) produced in the regional industrial clusters of Kuzbass, as well as in other areas, for example, for monitoring indicators of environment pollution. The article discusses in detail the regional investment and financial platform, which is could be developed on the basis of the Kuzbass Investment Portal. Another promising digital platform is a digital system that allows to coordinate strategies at various levels – from federal, regional and industry, to local and private companies. A serious challenge in implementing strategic initiatives to establish regional platforms is the growing competition from foreign platforms. The author proposes to reduce the risks by introducing target restrictions on the operations of foreign platforms, as well as introducing a balanced level of data provision by platform participants.