Creative industries as a factor in the socio-economic development of the Northwestern Federal District in the context of digital transformation

Aim. The work aims to identify the prospects and main fields for unlocking the potential of the creative industries sector as a modern factor in comprehensive regional socio-economic development in the context of the digital transformation of the economy and society. Objectives. The work seeks to substantiate the significance of the creative economy factor impact on the socio-economic development across regions; analyze the current regional strategies for socio-economic development (SSED) from the standpoint of accounting for and planning the use of the creative economy potential using the Northwestern Federal District (NWFD) as a case study; reveal the essence of legislative initiatives, the forms and methods applied to support organizations in the creative industries sector; identify successful practices for stimulating regional development of creative industries, as well as organizational and methodological problems in the implementation of existing measures to support creative industries in the regions; study the influence of the level of achieved socio-economic conditions of the NWFD regions, in particular the degree of digitalization, development of the cultural environment, the use of support measures for creative industries, on the assessment of the creative economy development; and formulate tasks that should be set when forming the SSED from the standpoint of supporting the creative economy at the regional level, and rational principles for implementing the SSED in the context of digital transformation. Methods. The study is based on general scientific methods of cognition, including systems, structural, semantic and comparative analysis, scientific synthesis, as well as methods of induction and deduction, detailing, generalization, and simulation. Results. Creative industries are shown to be a promising factor in regional socio-economic development on the one hand. On the other hand, the achieved level of socio-economic development, including the degree of regional digitalization, affects significantly the creative economy dynamics. For each entity of the Russian Federation included in the NWFD, “CI support” cards have been formalized, presenting the current situation in the entities of the Russian Federation related to the NWFD, while not all regions have a separate concept, in addition to the basic SSED, for the development of creative industries and mechanisms for implementing their state support. Moreover, the most common shortcomings of the support measures applied have been identified. The standard topics of the SSED subsections related to creative industries are formulated, multidirectional practices of supporting regional development of creative industries implementing organizational, financial, infrastructural, informational, and marketing functions are defined. The process of influence of the achieved socio-economic conditions, including digitalization parameters, on the development of creative industries in the NWFD regions is analyzed in detail. The work presents an assessment of the level of development of creative industries in the NWFD regions, which demonstrated its dependence on the degree of regional digitalization. Taking into account the requirements of digital transformation, rational principles, tasks, and functions are proposed, that should be implemented in the process of forming the SSED and regional concepts for the development of creative industries. Conclusions. In the context of digital transformation and the transition to the sixth technology revolution, the importance of taking into account the influence of the creative economy on the level of development of regional socio-economic systems of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and on the achievement of the goals of ideological, spiritual, moral, and socio-economic development on a national scale in Russia is increasing. The relevance of considering the digitalization requirements during the regional SSED implementation is increasing from the standpoint of the creative industries development. Regional authorities are developing an understanding of the need to implement the principles of digital transformation, namely innovation, digitalization, intellectual labor, public transparency, clustering, and image support. So far, regional support for the development of creative industries is characterized by significant heterogeneity of regional approaches to solving this problem. At the same time, there is an improvement of the ongoing process and an increase in the degree of compliance of regional vectors of the SSED direction with current national goals and development priorities. An urgent task of creating modern competitive advantages for the leadership of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation should be the systematic implementation of comprehensive regional mechanisms for supporting the creative industries sector based on the development of creative-oriented strategies for regional socio-economic development. At the regional level, special attention should be paid to the implementation of interrelated information systems in the creative economy, that perform marketing, information, educational, integrating, archival, and monitoring functions.