Over the past 10 years, the Bulgarian economy has changed dramatically. The manufacturing sector is gradually shifting towards higher value added production. The number of employed in traditional industries, for instance the clothing industry and furniture manufacturing, has dropped significantly.
There are clear reasons why Silicon Valley or Shenzhen are synonymous with high technologies – they are the place where entrepreneurs and businesses in this field have created their ecosystem, and accordingly attract those who want to break into the industry.
INESS organized the international conference “Do Regulations Kill Inovation? on June 19, 2018, focusing directly on the sharing economy, its potential for the future, and regulatory environment issues. The conference was attended by over 100 participants.
Germany’s greatest innovations are found not on the autobahn, but on the country’s fields and farms: self-driving high-tech tractors, milking robots, and feeding machines are already standard equipment for many farmers. Smart Farming is the future of agriculture.
AI and robotics are termed “disruptive technologies”, which sounds somewhat dangerous and fraught with risk. But according to the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology, disruptive technologies are simply “innovations which replace a successful, existing technology, product or service or oust it from the market”.
An example of innovation is a standardized cargo container. Today, there are more than 20 million of these containers around the globe and we move practically everything in them. This innovation from the late sixties completely changed the world.
Equally promising is that many politicians have clearly understood what clever solutions are: connecting the already existing services, using of the current state of knowledge, putting pressure on solutions implemented through open online platforms, encouraging interactions with citizens, among others.
A group of Trump’s strategic consultants at Technology Summit in Silicon Valley, the global center of technological innovation, has grown by two venerable names: Elon Musk and Travis Kalanick. Not familiar with these names? What a shame! Trump swallowed his pride and asked both of them to attend regular meetings.
With laughter through tears it can be said that so-called mailbox companies have a paradise here in Slovakia. But when companies are to have mailboxes, it’s considered a problem. This issue has a history several years long, which culminates now and has three levels.
The first task an economist has to master is to explain to people that there is such a thing as an economic problem. That is because people are more concerned with everyday emotionalism creeping into their lives by means of having to deal with another type of a problem that we could call an ‘engineering’ one.
