Stages of building alternative models of small and medium-sized businesses and higher education interaction

In today’s environment, the search for ways to bring small and medium-sized businesses and higher education closer together in order to achieve national development goals is a topic of scientific debate and discussion. Approaches to assessing such interaction have been considered, in which various sets of indicators and metrics have been proposed, but they do not cover the entire area of responsibility that currently lies with business and higher education. To justify the need to create conditions for small and medium-sized businesses and hig her education interaction, a wide range of data has been analyzed using correlation-regression analysis and machine learning methods. The results obtained made it possible to cluster variables from the presented data set in order to identify their interrelationships, including through the impact of common factors, as well as to cluster regions depen ding on the identified interrelated variables. The exploratory model built on the data obtained confirms the hypothesis about the need to search for those indicators of the studied systems that influence each other and social and economic development in general. At the same time, the set of such indicators varies for each regional cluster.