Development of Methodological Tools for Assessing the Effectiveness of Clusters in the Russian Federation

The article suggests the author’s version of the approach to assessing the effectiveness of clusters existing in the territory of the Russian Federation. The methodological tools are focused on assessing the effectiveness of industrial clusters, included in the register of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, and sectoral territorial and industrial clusters, supervised by the subjects of the Russian Federation. They are differentiated and include three evaluation criteria for each type of cluster. The evaluation system was tested on the example of 191 clusters. Information was collected through GISP and EMISS systems, sites-aggregators of data on companies, telephone interviews with public authorities responsible for the implementation of cluster policy in the regions, official response letters from ministries and cluster development centers in Russia. The work also proposed a system for assessing the performance of industrial clusters, supervised by the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation. The results made it possible to identify clusters with high and low levels of efficiency and effectiveness. This approach can be used by state authorities as part of the process of monitoring the activities of clusters and the implementation of cluster policy in order to optimize funding and improve the effectiveness of their support activities.