Contemporary economics is characterized by widespread informatization of all kinds of economic activity and information becoming the leading factor of production. Implementation of information technologies changes the economic structure. The author identifies the principal changes connected to the development of information economy, and explores their impact on the companies' competitive ability. Following that, the author conducts an analysis of factors influencing the competitive ability of a company in an information economy environment, as well as sources of competitive strengths. The author notices that an increase in resources mobility and markets' informational transparency has changed the nature of company's competitive ability. The last section of the article is dedicated to the analysis of informational activity and informatization of Russian businesses.
Highlights:
• Transition to information economy is constituted of widespread informatization of all business processes and enhancement of the role of information in production.
• The competitive environment of the company is transformed in new circums-tances.
• The ability to form competitive strengths and putting them into practice constitute the basis for a company's competitive ability.
• Informatization of the economy is a cause for decreases in levels of transaction costs and influence of geographical location on production and consumption processes, as well as increases in availability of information and information technologies, reduction of the goods' life cycle and enhancement of the role of network monopolies in the economy.
• In information economy, companies receive equal access to key resources be-cause of their high mobility.
• Significance of external factors of competitive ability is reduced, because mobility of resources has increased.
• Companies can make economic profit if they are able to innovate and quickly react to changes in their environment.
• Internal factors of the company's competitive ability now play a key role in its success.
• These include quality of human capital assets, level of flexibility of the organizational structure and effectiveness of information systems.
• Analysis of innovational activity and informatization of Russian businesses has shown that optimization of existing business processes is currently taking place. Structural changes in production and innovation, as of yet, are not taking place.
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