The need for digitalization of the agro-industrial complex is obvious – implementation of digital economy principles will create an institutional environment that meets modern realities and allows to generally improve production efficiency. Foreign experience of agriculture digitalization in the USA, Germany, Switzerland, and Ireland has been analysed in the article. Main technologies used for agro-industrial complex digitalization have been described. Advantages and potential of the smart farming implementation to control the accuracy of fertilizer application, prediction of adverse environmental events, quality improve of growing products and more open interaction between farmers and consumers, resource costs reduction and increase of farms profitability have been considered. Opportunities and obstacles for implementing technologies of the state project “Digital Agriculture” have been evaluated: big data, blockchain, smart farming, quantum technologies, Internet of things, robotics, wireless communications, virtual and augmented realities. Ingeneral the main obstacles are related to high cost of introducing new technologies, lack of necessary knowledge among farmers, lack of legal framework and standards, and lack of information and software protection mechanism. Barriers and their potential solutions in the process of agriculture digitalization in Russia have been defined in the article. Main solutions to overcome the barriers described include: favorable regulatory environment for digital agriculture development, information and economic security of agricultural producers, nationwide information and communication infrastructure for the industry (including provision of public services on the basis of a single cloud platform), necessary training for “intellectual” agriculture, implementation of digital technologies in related industries, development of the agricultural digital enterprise concept and the way of its implementation.

The problem of using cross-border data flows, which are becoming an important factor of production for the sustainable development of modern international trade in goods and services has been analysed. In international exchange, the importance of digital services continues to grow steadily, and as this rises, global data flows are increasing too. The latter, while serving the interests of global digital platforms, can nevertheless contribute to the diversification of developing countries’ exports and increase their participation in global value chains. The increase in digitalization of companies due to the rapid introduction of new technologies (data analysis, cloud computing) has raised their importance as a factor in commercial transactions, affecting both new and traditional industries. Despite the advantages for companies, consumers and national economies arising from the ability of organizations to easily exchange data across borders, many countries at all stages of development have established barriers to cross-border data transfer. The most common concept of such restrictions has become data localization, the implementation of which is a significant burden on the growth of the Gross National Product. The digital mercantilism of countries considered in this article is a response to the challenge of increasing the country’s participation in the international division of labour in the digital economy. However, barriers for cross-border data transfer also delay and increase the cost of developing new and innovative products, undermine the ability of local multinational companies to use global platforms to facilitate collaboration between firms, universities and other research organizations and promote their own innovations. International practice has not yet developed a single, dominant approach in the context of regulating cross-border data flows, but addressing this issue requires a new format of multilateral regulation that has not been used for international trade in traditional goods and services.

The main objective in this paper is to analyze the impact of cross-cultural communication on increasing business profitability. In order to do that, the research is based on three main concepts: cross-cultural skills, which are considered in our study one the most strategical tools for companies’ success, concerning both the profitability and the image of any company. Cross-cultural communication, as stated by the anthropologist Edward Hall in his book The Hidden Dimension. Hall is most associated with proxemics, the study of the human use of space within the context of culture. Bearing in mind Hall’s considerations, the paper emphasized the need and importance of cross-cultural education for employees, as long as the goal of the companies is to position themselves internationally. Intercultural communication. Hall’s ideas have also had a significant impact in communication theory, especially intercultural communication, where it inspired research on spatial perception that continues to this day. In the digital economy, there are different indicators for measuring the level of cross-cultural skills within a company: a financial indicator such as return on sales has an important role. Sales play a fundamental role in the activities of any company and they are causally related to the cross-cultural skills of employees and entrepreneurs concerning company’s management. Business management style as well as the type of cross-cultural communication existing in the company will determine the international position of any company. Communication and cross-cultural skills contribute to a positive image of the company, since these are skills pointing out at companies with multilingual staff, with personal and professional experience living and working in different countries, experts on using innovative technologies, characteristics which will strongly impact on final profitability results. The paper concludes focusing on the importance for all the international companies to invest in the concept of intercultural communication and cross-cultural skills as a way of behaving in business, since these skills will reward them with increasing ratios of business profitability in international markets.

The role of educational and scientific laboratories in the University environment has increased in recent eight years due to the transformation of education in the Russian Federation. New requirements to education, to the competencies that students acquire, the shift of the educational vector towards technological disciplines, the participation of Russian universities in the 5–100 project-all this makes it necessary to develop a new class of educational and scientific laboratories in Russian universities. At the same time, the requirements for the teaching staff of the Universities are changing new requirements for educational technologies are formulated. The implementation of the concept of University 2035, and in particular the emergence of the new National Technology Initiative (NTI) markets, such as: “Aeronet”, “Technet”, “Energynet” etc. imply the creation of a flexible model of education based on the individual learning trajectory. At the same time, the requirements for educational and scientific laboratories are changing ˗ today they must conduct research in various areas, respectively, laboratories, which imposes new requirements to the management of the laboratories and also to the format and laboratory equipment. It has been shown in the article that in the conditions of the educational environment transformation, the head of modern teaching and research laboratory must have a fundamentally new list of skills ˗ from the ability to plan and organize the scientific process, to managing the laboratory as a structural unit, which implies the presence of managerial skills.

Issues, arising in the field of intellectual property rights in connection with the development of artificial intelligence systems and their impact on the development of legal relations in the economy and culture of modern society, have been considered. Aspects of mutual policies in the field of intellectual property rights and the development of artificial intelligence systems for the development of innovation and creativity have been examined. Questions of copyright and ownership in the interaction of man, collective and artificial intelligence or artificial intelligence systems have been raised and proposed. Issues related to artificial intelligence as an object of intellectual property have been considered. The position of the author on the legal personality of artificial intelligence to intellectual property objects created by autonomous artificial intelligence systems has been presented, which is expressed in the answers to the questions of the project of the World Intellectual Property Organization to the wide discussion of interested parties, planned for 2020 at the headquarters of the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva. The main conceptual principle of the author on the issues of the planned discussion is to grant the right of copyright and ownership of intellectual property objects created by autonomous artificial intelligence to a dressed subject – a person or collective, a developer of artificial intelligence with fixation of the latter as a sub-subject or instrument of the subject. Traditional categories of intellectual property rights also have been considered, such as patentability and the inventive level of property in connection with the possible generation of these objects by artificial intelligence. Issues related to data, its generation, fabrications and legal relations regarding data have been considered. Harmonization of international intellectual property rights policies to alleviate the technological gap between countries in the context of artificial intelligence development has been examined.

The object of the study are the processes of incorporation of digital technologies in the activities of subjects of the housing and communal services market. The information and telecommunication technologies have been analysed in the paper, the use of which allows us to expand the range of services provided to residents of apartment buildings by management organizations in the field of housing and communal services. Factors and conditions of diversification of services of management companies due to introduction of “Uber-technologies” have been considered. One of the tools of digitalization of housing and communal services is the so-called “uberization”. “Uberization” of housing services in large cities has significant economic potential. As of the end of 2019, commercial projects of “uberization” of housing services in Russia are at the stage of pilot testing. At the same time, Russia has a rather unique situation – there is a “goal – setting” on the part of the state, institutionalized by regulations, state national and Federal programs, and most importantly-there is a request from the society, since such services are technologically little different from buying food on the Internet or ordering a taxi. The development of “Uber-technologies” is impossible without a comprehensive solution to the problems of modern digital society, which can really have an impact on the work of a mass digital platform. These issues include: ensuring human rights in the digital world, including the identification and preservation of the user’s digital data, as well as the problem of ensuring the trust of citizens in the digital environment; threats to the individual, business and the state associated with the trends of building complex hierarchical information and telecommunications systems that widely use virtualization, remote (cloud) data storage, as well as heterogeneous communication technologies and terminal devices.; expansion of opportunities for external information and technical impact on the information infrastructure, including critical information infrastructure; growth of computer crime scales.

The factors and opportunities for development of digital ecosystems in developing countries have been analysed. The purpose of the study is to summarize the practice of digitalization of emerging markets and to develop an approach to research of the potential for digital entrepreneurship development in these countries. It has been shown, that there are still many economic constraints that prevent developing countries from integrating effectively into the digital economy. It has been proven, that the effect of digital transformation vectors assists redefining the economic policy of developing countries. Such policy should become trans- and multidisciplinary, more iterative and flexible. In particular, investment promotion methods, rules of origin and other geographical specifications, labor and social policies of the states should be interpreted in a new way. Finally, economic policy should take into account, that many markets are being reoriented to platforms (which, for example, may involve a review of public service delivery policies to take advantage of platforms). It has been substantiated, that the development of digital entrepreneurship in developing countries was largely due to the quality of digital ecosystems, which can be presented as innovation centers, but it is hampered by the uneven development of digital start-ups between countries. It has been concluded, that even with opportunities to build digital platforms and ecosystems in developing countries, their companies can`t scale widely to overseas markets, and catching-up platforms have almost no potential to reach global platforms in the long term. The main factors, limiting the comparative size of platforms and the potential of global platforms in developing countries are weak local economic and business environment, low reliability of payment systems, low technological potential, problems with efficient logistics.

In the last decade unprecedented technological changes have taken place, resulting in the emergence of a fundamentally new economic model. Based on the widespread spread of smartphones, the world has become more “connected”. The digitalization of demand and supply contributed to the creation of entirely new digital markets managed by platform enterprises based on an open business model, that enabled external consumers and producers to connect and interact with each other. A more interconnected world generates vast amounts of data, allowing platform companies to invest in machine learning and artificial intelligence and ultimately improve their efficiency. Finally, a steady digitalization of business processes, markets and global value chains is observed. In these circumstances, approaches to value addition are fundamentally changing in the context of new dimensions of the digital economy, the analysis of which was the purpose of our study. It has been identified, that in the absence of a standardized international methodology for measuring the digital economy, the latter is so far possible on disparate development-left and national statistics. Initiatives taken at the international level to overcome national differential approaches are still insufficient, as there is a lack of statistics and variables related to digital data. It has been revealed, that the lack of quality statistics on key indicators of the digital economy makes it difficult to assess the value added in the world economy scale and international comparisons. Much of the challenges of measuring value added in the digital economy, as shown in the article, are related to the principle of “scale without mass,” the intangible nature of capital, the intense growth of large-scale cross-border data flows, and the emergence of new sources of value creation.

The present paper consists of two parts. In the first part, the issues of communication between government and business entities have been considered. The role of the communication for the modern society development has been assessed. Implementation of concepts of open government, public participation and corporate governance are the requirements to the governments who would like to “keep in touch” with business entities. In many countries, cooperation, awareness and continuous interaction not only with citizens, but also with business entities became important factors of changes in the system of management, especially in the government information policy. In such countries, a shift is observed of regulatory function toward more open and more interactive interaction. Business entities have a real chance now to influence the improvement and development of public policy and management system. The publications on this subject mainly those published abroad, have been analysed. A particular emphasis is on the characteristics of communication channels: reliability, speed and effectiveness (efficiency). In the second part of the paper, the issues of creation of “digital government”, as well as special aspects of creation of “digital government” in developing countries have been considered, although in many ways the processes of “digitalization” of government organs are characteristic for the developed countries as well. It has been noted, that the implementation of digital information technologies and digital communications in the public sector organization would have a favorable impact on the way the public services are provided. With proper implementation, the digital government may decrease the cost of provision of public services and establish conditions for better contacts with citizens, especially in distant and less populated regions. Digital government can also influence the creation of better transparency and accountability of the decisions made, stimulate the development of local digital culture and promote the development of democracy. To determine the efficiency of any particular act of communication the concept of “communicative result” is introduced. The cultural dependence of the communication result has been noticed.

The current stage in the development of the world community is characterized by high rates of development of digital technologies and their practical implementation in many areas of life. The purpose of the paper is the analysis of the system for monitoring for the development of the information society and the digital economy, both in the Russian Federation and abroad. The role of international organizations in creating methodological foundations for the study of the implementation of information technology has been revealed in the article. The chronology of the development and implementation of the main regulatory documents, on the basis of which data is being collected on countries and their comparison, has been considered. Particular attention to the study of Russia’s place in the ratings compiled by various international organizations has been paid. A system of indicators of a national system for monitoring the development of the digital economy has been adduced, which reflects the development factors of the information society and the use of information and communication technologies. The dynamics of the gross value added of the ICT sector of the Russian economy and the number of people employed in the information and communication technologies sector have been analysed. Significant variability in the intensity of the dynamics indicators, reflecting various aspects of the development of the information society, as well as a significant lag of Russia from the leading countries in certain areas of the ICT sector, have been identified. It has been shown that the key task aimed at correcting this situation is to improve the investment climate in the information and communication technologies sector. At the same time, the imperfection of the methodology for monitoring the development of the information society and the digital economy does not allow us to take timely measures to regulate digitalization processes. It has been concluded that it is necessary to continue work on improving indicators for monitoring the implementation of the government program “Digital Economy of the Russian Federation”.