At present, the issues of overcoming the negative structural shift in Russian economy, accelerating economic growth, reducing technological and social- and-economic gap between Russia and the developed countries are strategically important. Modern structure of Russian economy which had been developed as a part of market model does not generate the innovative type of development. In this situation, mining regions, the structure of which was formed in the early 20th century and is represented by the extractive industries, are undergoing the greatest problems of innovative development. Therefore, despite high urbanization and industrial development level the economy of Kuzbass (Western Siberia, Russia) is characterized by significant structural problems. They are associated with primary extractive nature of the regional industry, in which coal and iron ore, metallurgical and chemical industries dominate. They highly depend on Russian and global market of raw materials, widely use low-productive technologies, and they are characterized by high level of fixed capital depreciation and insufficient pace of innovative infrastructure development. The solution of the structural problems of economic development of mining region is connected with technological modernization of extractive industries and use of modern materials for the production of high-tech products.