Enhancing the resilience of regional industry: governance mechanisms based on digital ecosystems

Abstract: In the context of geopolitical tensions and intensifying sanctions pressure, achieving technological sovereignty has become a key priority for ensuring the economic security of the Russian Federation. A mechanism for enhancing the resilience of the regional industrial sector has been developed, which is based on a three-component model: the government-science-business interaction (triple helix), the formation of specialised digital ecosystems taking into account the region’s competitive advantages (smart specialisation), and the coordination of innovation processes through regional innovation systems. Within this mechanism, a matrix of key performance indicators has been developed for calculating the innovation resilience index. The matrix includes two fundamentally new components: an index for the implementation of national projects in the field of digital transformation of industry and an integral indicator of the region’s digital ecosystem development (covering technopark infrastructure, the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies, and the level of digitalisation of production processes). Mechanism approbation on five constituent entities of the Russian Federation revealed that the leading region (index 10.00) outperforms the lagging region (index 4.16) by a factor of 2.4, while the gap in the “digital ecosystem development” component reaches 34.2 percentage points. DEA analysis identified that in four out of five (80 %) of the studied regions, the efficiency ratio for using innovation potential falls below 0.8, indicating significant untapped reserves. The results obtained confirm the viability of the proposed approach and suggest that targeted development of digital ecosystems could serve as a tool for reducing interregional disparities and strengthening the country’s technological independence.