Best Practices in The Development of IT Clusters in The Asia-Pacific Region

The article analyzes current trends in the digital development of special economic zones and digital clusters with the purpose of identifying the criteria of and conditions for their successful functioning. A digital transformation that is happening now in the Asia-Pacific Region has spurred the emergence of new types of special economic zones: not only new high-tech zones and digital clusters are being established, but also robotics industry special zones, digital free trade zones that are a convergence of brick-and-mortar zone and virtual zones. This encourages the development of competitive fiscal regulation of the IT sector in different countries. A peculiarity of such zones is a concentration of priority high-tech industries that use advanced IT solutions such as information innovations, biotechnology, new materials, robotization and online environment development. The authors prove that a key success factor for special economic zones and clusters in the IT industry is the presence of a comprehensive state policy that stipulates qualification criteria for companies and projects operating within such zones, incentives for companies implementing quality management standards (ISO 9000/2001, CMM or GMP).