The EU has set out its vision for Europe's social market economy in the Europe 2020 strategy, which aims at confronting our structural weaknesses through progress in smart specialization. In line with the Guide to Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialization, this paper aims to identify key directions of sustainable innovative development of Russian resource regions and determine their readiness for smart specialization. Relying on clustering methodological approaches, this study has revealed: 1) economically developed resource regions, ready for smart specialization by attracting private sector investment; 2) resource regions ready for smart specialization using only public-private partnership, 3) enclave resource regions that initially require significant government support to enhance their investment attractiveness for private sector participation. The use of public-private partnerships and other forms of state support is a priority task at the initial stage, while regions with weak economic structure should receive support from the state until they become attractive to active private capital investing.