Currently, the achievements of science and technological progress define in a greater degree new reference points of the strategic planning for national and regional development are d by. The results of research and development which are noteworthy from the point of view of the improvement of scientific, technological, socio- economic processes in northern and Arctic territories (in our case — the Republic of Komi), as a rule, take the form of interdisciplinary projects. These projects generate the results of research on the social and economic, humanitarian and medical- biological problems; conservation of biosphere and ecosystems with simultaneous development of bioresource economics; management of mineral-raw, fuel and energy resources; spatial development; creation and use of innovative technologies. The key idea of the paper is the realization of new industrialization of the Republic of Komi taking into account the results of the research works carried out at the institutes of the Komi Scientific Centre of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The applied research of the institutes of the Komi Scientific Centre is based on fundamental studies and is closely connected with the practice of the development and location of production. They are oriented at the realization of a new paradigm of the northern policy which consists not only in the development of mineral-raw and power resources for external consumers, but also in the arrangement, sustainable development and creation of appropriate conditions for the life of the population settled down in the North. Special attention is paid to the reproduction of human and natural resource potentials. The sectoral structure of the economy of the republic, as well as of the majority of other northern and Arctic regions, will not change drastically in the long term,, but the internal content of productive forces will be different. It will correspond to the concept of resource-innovative development.

The article considers the problems of improving the economic system and shaping the relevant rules and norms of economic activities in the context of the institutionalism’s growing importance. We analyse the possibility to use the «agreement theory» and «philosophy of co-operation» for explaining the essence of economic policy as a whole, regional policy of the state and economic policy of the regions (constituent entities of the Russian Federation). In the institutional approach, the key role belongs to the coordination of interests that is both an objective law of public development and the way to overcome critical situations. We characterise subsystems of the «agreement theory», including an exchange of commodities, production and technologies, traditional economic activities, ecology, civil society, public opinion, creative activities. The obtained «matrix of understanding» might be used as a «roadmap» of the economic policy at all levels (state, region, company) taking into account an obligatory adjustment for the specificity of the national economy and its spatial arrangement. We have underlined that the general theoretical concepts of economic policy can not be applied to the regional policy. The whole (national economy) cannot be reduced to the sum of the parts (regional economies), thus, many macroeconomic processes and events are not traced in its individual components. In the regional development, the institution of economic federalism plays the key role. We have defined the spheres of the regions’ economic activities, where regional efforts can lead to the positive result. Such spheres include property relations, rational nature management, price policy, fiscal and credit-and-monetary spheres, regulatory actions of the relations between the state and regional authorities, and interregional integration.