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Rumen Georgiev, Milen Velushev
THE INNOVATION STRATEGY AND THE COMPETITIVE POSITIONS OF BULGARIAN ECONOMY
Summary:
As an EU member state, it has become an imperative for Bulgaria to fit in the economic structure of the European Union. In order to promote economic growth, the Union assigned member-states with the task to identify the advantages which will enable them to specialize in the production of goods and services with high added value. Specialization will thus enable member states to focus their effort on consolidating their comparative advantages by employing as an instrument the innovation paradigm. To respond to this challenge, Bulgaria designed its ‘Innovation Strategy for Smart Specialization’ in 2014. The aim of this research is to identify the extent to which the Strategy reflects the real opportunities for the national economy to increase the value added of its production by introducing innovations in specific technological areas stated in the document. The findings of the research indicate that the Innovation Strategy is not in compliance with the underlying logic of the European Commission or the OECD in terms of identifying the economic activities that have real potential as comparative advantages and core competences and where the fastest and most sustainable growth of value added could be expected through the adoption of innovations.
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Trayan Yosifov
Competitive Advantages of Adopting Biotechnological Innovations
Summary:
The underexploited potential of the national economy results in a low standard of living and a poor investment environment. Due to the current condition of economic processes, Bulgaria ranks at the bottom in terms of its GDP compared to other EU member-states and is one of the countries with the fastest declining population in the world. Low competitiveness and innovativeness of Bulgarian enterprises underlie the lack of any serious economic progress. This finding is true even for the economic spheres which contemporary biotechnological innovations are based on and in which our country has real advantages in terms of its natural resources and climate. The objective of this research paper is to analyse the main economic aspects of Life sciences and to present some major European accomplishments and partnerships in the pursuit of competitive advantages by enterprises operating in the sphere of biotechnologies.
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Rositsa Chobanova
TERRITORIAL ASPECTS OF INNOVATIVE DEVELOPMENT: CITIES
Summary:
This study discusses the territorial aspect of development through renovation linking it to cities where communication between people, the resultant emergence of problems and prospective solutions are more intensive.
The purpose of this study is to achieve a better understanding of what makes a city innovative and what the problems are in building an innovative city or district. In this context, first, the methodologies for defining, grouping and ranking innovative cities and similar territorial units are characterized. The results of the first comprehensive rankings of innovative cities in the world, Europe and China are presented. The second part of the study is devoted to characterizing debates regarding the European concept for the development of metropolitan areas as innovation centres within the Europe 2020 Strategy. Some ideas for the innovative development of territories in Bulgaria are suggested. The conclusion is that innovative development in a territorial aspect is related to the development of cities and metropolitan areas, which requires regular monitoring, evaluation and well-grounded measures for development, taking into account global good practice.
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Radoslav Tsonchev, Stoimenka Tonova
FINANCIAL INNOVATION
AND THE NEW REGULATION
Summary:
The majority of experts and practitioners share the opinion that one of the major reasons for the world financial crisis from the period 2007-2009 is the failure of the market regulation both as statutory framework and professional practice. Unfortunately, the traditional financial doctrine was not in position to adequately assess the high complexity of the modern financial markets. It did not address in detail the essence of the financial innovations and to a certain extent allowed the deregulation and market self-regulation and thus allowing the widespread of such innovations. This survey is an attempt (i) to respond to the need for better understanding of the financial innovations, (ii) to point out and analyze the regulatory challenges caused by the market dynamics and (iii) to assess the steps already taken. It is not by chance that the reforms of the regulatory framework played a major role in the post-crisis period. Their progress in the last two or three years has been remarkable but, in our opinion, there is still a lot left to be accomplished in this field.
