Potential areas of financial incentives for the development of scientific and innovation clusters

Currently, cluster associations are one of the most effective forms of organisation of innovation processes in the region, in which not individual enterprises compete in the market, but entire complexes that reduce their costs through cooperation. Such associations help to increase labour productivity, accelerate the pace of innovation in production, promote the competitiveness of various sectors of the economy, do not require significant funds and consist of various initiatives to encourage participants to cooperate. The establishment of the cluster allows the development of a specific economic space designed to expand free trade, increase exports of the cluster’s products, and free movement of capital and human resources. The purpose of the study – summarise the mechanisms of support for cluster developments abroad. To expose modern aspects of the national institutional environment to stimulate the genesis of scientific and innovative agro clusters and identify the main possible areas of financial support for their development. General scientific and specific methods of empirical research were used: comparative-historical and monographic, which allowed evaluation of the dynamics of the development of state support for clustering processes in the European Union and Ukraine, and to identify the sources of their financial incentives; systematic approach - contributed to the study of the mechanisms of interaction of the cluster as a system with the surrounding social environment, to perceive the cluster development as a dynamic, constantly evolving integrity; analysis and synthesis provided an opportunity to identify potential financial methods of cluster support and to integrate approaches to the development of a mechanism for stimulating cluster associations; cognitive operations of comparison and description were used; the abstract and logical method was used for theoretical generalisations and conclusions. The implementation of modern cluster policies in the countries of the European Union is analysed. It is established that, despite the specificity of the development and implementation of cluster programs and their dependence on the context and validity of national/regional policies in different territories, the analysed approaches have some progressive similarities. The priority opportunities of smart specialisation of the region are presented, in the design of which cluster developments are the main “blocks”. The best European projects related to the socio-economic growth of regions that stimulate the development of clustering are highlighted. The components of sustainable financing of regional cluster development in Ukraine are defined, which primarily involves start-up state support. The possibility of stimulating the clustering process with funds allocated from the state budget for the development of the regions, and for financing the Sectoral Policy Support Program was assessed. The possibility of self-financing and self-crediting scientific and innovative agricultural clusters, which will be established based on interregional scientific centres of NAAS, was confirmed. The conceptual foundations for the design of sources of financial support for the establishment and development of scientific and innovative cluster models based on interregional research centres of NAAS were developed. Based on successful European experience, the theoretical and methodological approaches to the development of financial clustering mechanisms in Ukraine have been improved. The areas of financial incentives for clustering processes within the framework of national, sectoral and regional strategies, in particular, strategies for the smart specialisation of regions and territorial communities, strategies to support small and medium-sized businesses as the main element of entrepreneurial initiative and the basic driver of cluster establishment are proposed