Digital Transformation Trends: Strategic Analysis and Opportunities for Russian Regions

This strategic analysis of global and national digital transformation trends highlights some new opportunities for Russia’s regions. Professor V. L. Kvint’s theory of strategy and methodology of strategizing provided a deeper understanding of the key factors behind the digital transformation of regional economies. The current global trends involve the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital infrastructure. The national trends lie in the ICT sphere, human resources, and digital literacy, as well as in the growing interregional digital gap and costs. The OTSW analysis of global and national trends revealed some major long-term strategic opportunities for regional economies, e.g., conquering international technology markets, developing digital sovereignty and infrastructure for data security purposes, accelerating digitalization processes in the regions, improving people’s digital skills, etc. On the one hand, low national and regional aspirations in the AI sphere may increase the risk of falling behind the global trends and losing competitive advantages. On the other hand, a larger and faster AI implementation would require new strategic documents to standardize the digital transformation at the national level.