Сommunication centers as an element of the institutional environment of innovative economy

The article discusses the relationship of information and communication factors and the level of innovation of a socio-economic system, the importance of informal communication and tacit knowledge within the modern concepts of knowledge economy and communicative economy. The aim of this work is to propose a concept of communication centers, show their place and role in the innovation infrastructure, to identify their basic characteristics and to develop an approach to understanding those of their functions for which the implementation infrastructure could be effectively created in addition to the existing elements of the national and regional innovation systems. The concept that we have adopted as a basis for the study is that the key function of a communication center in the socio-economic system with a given level of development is the organizing the interaction with representatives of socio-economic systems whose levels of development are the same or higher in order to obtain from them (through exchange, purchase, etc.) advanced technology, skills and other kinds of valuable information and knowledge. The main conclusions are as follows. The quality of knowledge at the micro-level, i. e. the long-term human capital of the region determines the actual availability and quality of the communication center in the existing innovation infrastructure of the region. The conducted review of the functions and features of the institutions of regional innovative infrastructure, including the technology platforms and the innovative regional clusters, as well as communications platforms in individual companies, and also the functions of the so-called innovative lift development institutes made it possible to establish that the communication center should have the following main characteristics: it should be intensely involved in the diffusion of innovations; it should integrate the directly interacting units that should be grouped geographically for informal transmission of tacit knowledge; it should have significant executive and administrative authority. A further substantiation of investments into creating the appropriate communication centers and an analysis of their effectiveness seems necessary.