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Innovation practices of wine industry private stakeholders /The case of Bulgaria/
Abstract and Figures
This Book deems to summarize essential and critical statements from genuine publications of the Members of the Project.
In fact, this Book shall be taken to stand as a Research Compendium – a special class of intellectual product that combines texts, references, and excerpts of selected project publications and professional expertise of the Members of the Research Team.
Thus, this Research Compendium serves as the Final Reporting Product of the Research.
The collection of concise but detailed information about innovation practices is aimed at private stakeholders to summarize and systematize the key points that are considered the product of the research study.
Executive Summary
This book explores innovation performance of the Bulgarian wine industry private stakeholders. The research study deals with an essential economic problem, related to whether innovation businesses may play key role in European and Bulgarian business practice. The study takes into consideration that Bulgaria is an emerging market economy, which transited from a centrally planned economy in the early 1990s to a social market economy since its accession to EU in 2007.
The aim of this milestone research for the wine industry sector of Bulgaria is to find dependencies among non-examined phenomena from the economic, social, and political spheres being not investigated up to this date.
The expected effects of the research is to generate new knowledge about the investigated economic and socio-political phenomena as well as to explain the relations between the socio-political environment, on the one hand, and the opportunities for innovation practices of SMEs, on the other.
Human interrelations are the engine for application of innovations.
Thus, this study is focused upon wine industry as a specific sector of the Bulgarian economy.
Only SMEs positioned in Bulgaria are included in this research, as main limitation of the scope of the study.
Wine industry is a traditional sector of Bulgaria’s economy, but the political processes in the late 1980s affected negatively every aspect of wine production in the country.
The research methodology is of a survey-descriptive type. A wide range of research methods are used to successfully achieve the goals and tasks of the research.
The method of expert assessment is used, and it is conducted with the support of scholars from listed economic universities as consultants (see the Appendix List).
There were conducted in-person verbal interviews with stakeholders of wine industry enterprises in Bulgaria to test the ideas, build knowledge, and gain insightful comments to the investigated research ideas.
In addition, Two Focus Groups were held to produce a single agreed platform for communicating in an objective way how companies work. The focus groups were tested through in-depth interviews, as it follows:
Focus Group I
In-depth Interviews with 5 CEOs, who participated in the Pilot Study.
In-depth Interviews with 25 professionals of the wine industry, who participated in the Pilot Study.
Focus Group II
In-depth Interviews with 15 CEOs, who participated in the Final Research.
In-depth Interviews with 15 professionals of the wine industry, who participated in the Final Research.
Based on the professional opinions collected, it was constructed within the research a conceptual model of how to establish an Innovative Enterprise.
The survey used simple random sampling: 156 questionnaires were distributed, and 67 questionnaires were finally received.
Analysis of collected data was made using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS).
The goal of the study was achieved as the undertaken research of the wine industry enterprises and stakeholders, positioned in Bulgaria, discovered new methodological approaches for studying the following three applicable business dimensions:
- level of implementation of innovations by wine industry stakeholders;
- innovation activities of the SMEs and
- applied innovation strategies by the SMEs.
In summation, this book shall be taken to stand as a basic up-to-date study for further investigation of the innovation phenomena discussed.
KEY WORDS
Innovations, Competitiveness, Wine Industry, Bulgaria.
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... There is a need for more crisis-related teaching scenarios that reflect the context-specific experiences of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship at all stages of the entrepreneurial lifecycle [1]. The fundamental knowledge and good practices that are studied in the context of the course will enhance start-up initiatives and the search for innovative business models [76]. The mediating role of entrepreneurial resilience and the state commitment to entrepreneurs' challenges is also important, and these research findings can support policymakers in formulating relevant strategies to encourage SMEs that have been hit the worst by the COVID-19 pandemic to perform sustainably [77]. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic is a trying time for both businesses and citizens. The measures and restrictions were devastating for the economy. As different countries had their strengths and challenges in dealing with the pandemic, there no unified approach applicable to every context. However, the entrepreneurial initiative is what boosts the economic development in each free market economy. The current paper's goal is to evaluate how the pandemic affects entrepreneurial initiatives and to determine the degree to which three sets of elements influence these initiatives. The scope of the research is enterprises, working in the city of Plovdiv, Bulgaria, and the focus is the entrepreneurial initiative among them. The research with the enterprises is based only on a quantitative method-a survey across a representative sample of the general population of the enterprises whose headquarters are registered in the territory of the city of Plovdiv. The representative sample was selected as a random sample of 1000 companies (with an assumed response rate of about 10%), stratified by the size of the enterprise (number of employees) and by the field of economic activity. Statistical analysis was performed using the software product IBM SPSS version 26. The results show that the personal characteristics of the respondents are more relevant to the results rather than the specifics of the enterprise. The relevance of both work experience and ownership of the enterprise as preconditions that create opportunities for entrepreneurial initiatives during the global crisis offers a further empirical contribution. A key theoretical contribution of this study lies in finding evidence that innovativeness has a significant direct effect on behavioral intention to acquire new opportunities during crisis conditions.
This paper illustrates a publicity model, which delivers computed data for human capital formation and evaluation at the University of Plovdiv-Pasii Hilendarski‖, Bulgaria. Financing of this paper is provided by the project-Vita Plus‖ (2021-2022)-a transdisciplinary project at University level in Bulgaria. The object of the paper is to explain to the public and interested parties how a University-Business partnership might be constructed achievable by building public-private partnerships through adequate profiling of research teams. The focus of this research is to illustrate how a decade-long accrued expertise in the field of human capital formation and evaluation at the University of Plovdiv may be translated to construct various academic teams in a transdisciplinary mode and present themselves under a research team brand to the public, as well as public and private stakeholders for doing for-profit science. The aim of the authors is to present good research practices and efforts for effective publicity and public awareness activities of the human capital capacity at publicly funded Universities and institutions. Successful public outreach practices are essential for team motivation and reputation of scientific branding of University research teams. Thus, this paper delivers theoretical and methodological reasoning behind the idea, coupled with some University of Plovdiv data, retrieved by the authors. The presented research study seeks to introduce to private stakeholders the Model for Human Capital Evaluation by using various methods and techniques. The suggested model and summarized results of the scientific expertise under the project activities portray an actual know-how to innovative businesses. The authors' intent is to provide practical and straightforward presentation of human capital formation in transdisciplinary projects and to illustrate why the need for applying innovative solutions in academia in Bulgaria is seemed necessary. A wide range of research methods was used to successfully achieve the goals and tasks, i.e., secondary analysis of empirical data based on human capital formation (CVs), structured interview with the project team members (23 people), unstructured (in-depth) interviews with experts in project management and university professors (15 people), and triangulation. As a result of the authors efforts, an own questionnaire was developed, and empirical evidence are yet to come (forthcoming survey using online inquiry based on Google Forms software).
The innovations take an essential role in the Bulgarian economic environment as well as in the national strategies for economic growth. For many companies, improving and increasing innovation and the ability to develop innovation is the most important factor for growth. The paper explores the innovation activity of the wine industry as a specific sector of the Bulgarian economy. The purpose of the current study is to identify the attitudes of the wine producers towards innovations and to discuss the innovation activity of their enterprises. The methods used include in-person verbal interviews, which were conducted with 15 participants as expert practitioners to test the ideas, build knowledge, and gain insightful context and nuance to the ideas. The results show that although some of the wine producers implement innovations they don’t realize it. The focus of their innovations is in the product, process, and technological innovations, because they try to reach a balance between quality and price. It looks like that the institutions are more like obstacle rather than support for such activity. Thus, we can
conclude that to a high extent the wine producers in Bulgaria are implementing and willing to
implement innovations. However, they are not well aware of the possible innovations, their potential for increasing competitiveness and therefore are focusing only on directly improving their product.
It is inevitable that XXI century is marked by the development of the information society and the digitalization. Most of the innovations in every area are related to the introduction of new digital technologies. The information and communication technologies (ICT) contribute to more innovative methods of work for the individuals, companies and the states. The role of the latter is rather important as the environment it creates plays a significant role on the ICT usage among the individuals and companies. The information society provides numerous and diverse information and educational resources, available at any time and place. This leads to a fundamental change in the environment, habits and expectations. Furthermore, the digitalization of the society is also significant topic in the recent years. In fact the digital tools are not just a support to various sector, but rather they cover every area of life. This caused the necessity countries to develop digital policies as a response to the challenges and opportunities of the digitalization. In 2014 it was adopted Strategy for the effective implementation of information and communication technologies in education and science of the Republic of Bulgaria (2014-2020) and at the end of 2019 Bulgaria adopted National Program "Digital Bulgaria 2025". The digitalization is tightly connected to the introduction of innovations. Last decades have been marked by the rapid development of innovations in various areas, namely industry, technology, communication, science, education, etc. It is indisputable that innovative practices can significantly improve the functioning of the area, in which they are implemented. The European Union (EU) also set the priorities of the Union for its digital development. As concerns the economy, the EU describes small and medium-sized enterprises as-the backbone of Europe's economy‖ thus this makes them rather significant for examination. However, the EU member states have different stage of digitalization and innovation. Thus, the purpose of the current study is to identify the level of digitalization and of innovations in Bulgaria compared to other EU member states. The methodology, used to achieve the purpose include secondary processing of quantitative data from Eurostat and the Global Innovation Index, and comparative analysis. The results show that the level of digitalization and innovation across EU member states may differ, but on every indicator Bulgaria holds one of the last positions. Thus, we can conclude that the country still has challenges in various areas and must apply the opportunities for their digitalization, including education and economy (SMEs in particular). This gives ground to recommend more efforts of the authorities in supporting the digitalization and implementation of innovations in every area, including E-government.
We are living in a time when the population of the Earth is increasing and the available resources are decreasing. The latter requires the establishment of a smart and sustainable bio-based economy, and the creation of such an economy is tightly associated with the implementation of innovations. Bulgarian wine industry is a sector, where possibilities of innovations related to bio-economy are vast and open. Thus, the current study aims at identifying the entrepreneurial endeavours and the innovations' involvement in the wine industry as a specific sector of the bio-based economy in Bulgaria. The results indicate that there is a potential for the introduction of bio innovations in the wine industry as the producers are willing to implement them. However, currently there are almost no innovations related to the bio-economy and the prevailing innovations in Bulgarian wine industry are the marketing ones.
The paper presents a conceptual model for investigating the innovation activity of enterprises from the wine industry in Bulgaria. The study aims to submit a unified methodological framework for application by experts in researching, analyzing and bench-marking the innovation activity in the sector. Many researchers confirm that different innovation models are appropriate for different sectors, regardless of best practices in innovation management, and it all depends on the specificity of innovation and its relationship to sector specificities. Thus, the examination of wine sector requires a specific approach and an empirical research, based on own questionnaire focused on the individualism and the need to study the innovation niches and opportunities of wine sector.
Optimization of the collaboration “business-science-education” is a prerequisite for the increase of the competitivenessof the enterprises. The article introduces a scientific solution of a practical problem through the creation of a model for informal education of specialists in the wine industry. The presented models are a part of the Virtual Educational Space (VES) as asmart space, context-dependent, based on a script and a controlled infrastructure. The results of the approbation of the model prove its significance for the practical processes and the increase of the competency of the specialists in connection to the implementation of innovation. Particularly to the wine industry, the suggested model for informal education represents a specific innovation, which approbates the known “good practices” in the strategy “Lifelong Learning”.
Competitiveness is a fundamental indicator of great importance for the functioning of both enterprises and national economies. A number of factors influence the assessment of an enterprise's competitiveness. Among these factors is innovation activity. For Bulgaria wine production is a traditional sector with potential for development in different directions. Given the increasing competition on the domestic and world wine market, a research of the Bulgarian wine industry is more than necessary. One of the directions that can contribute to increasing the competitiveness of the sector is increasing the innovation activity of the wine producers. In this sense, the aim of this study is to conceptualize the role of innovation activity as an element of competitiveness, and in particular its role in improving the competitiveness of the wine industry. For this purpose, a number of theoretical sources and empirical studies on innovation activity and competitiveness in both general and wine- making are reviewed. Systematization of the studied literature was made and summaries were made about the possible contribution of the innovation activity in improving the competitiveness of Bulgarian wine production.
As the studies and empirical data indicate that innovations are a significant factor for improving competitiveness, we believe that scientific research in this area may provide support for those who seek to make their business more innovative. There are many works dedicated to general effect of innovations on growth, but less are focused on the role of innovations in certain sectors. Such sector is might be the wine industry. The wine industry in Bulgaria has a long history, experience and has the potential for development. That is why we examine the scope of innovations that can be implemented in the wine industry. Alongside we study the potential of Bulgarian wine industry. The results show that the wine producers in Bulgaria make slow steps towards more contemporary development of the sector, but the more significant results are yet to come.
The economic development of a country, a region or an economic sector is associated with the introduction of innovation. The sector of wine production is traditional for the Bulgarian economy and thus the innovation activity in the sector can contribute to the overall development of the economic processes. The current paper presents the results of a pilot study. Through it we tested the questionnaire, which we are going to use in the final field work. Furthermore, it provides some preliminary results on what innovations have been applied in SMEs from wine industry, located in Plovdiv region. Thus, the questionnaire was sent to a selection of representatives of the sector. The results indicate that this format of the questions is easy to be understood and doesn’t require much times to be filled. It also showed us that the wine producers already apply most of the suggested innovation or would apply them.
Are you wishing you knew how to better communicate science, without having to read several hundred academic papers and books on the topic? Luckily Dr Craig Cormick has done this for you! This highly readable and entertaining book distils best practice research on science communication into accessible chapters, supported by case studies and examples. With practical advice on everything from messages and metaphors to metrics and ethics, you will learn what the public think about science and why, and how to shape scientific research into a story that will influence beliefs, behaviours and policies.
In early August 2019, the U.S.A. saw 2 significant mass shootings in just 48 hours. On Twitter, Neil deGrasse Tyson responded with a tweet to his millions of followers. He outlined the number of deaths in 48 hours from other causes, and seemed to disparage the human tendency to respond emotionally “more to spectacle than to data”. The tweet resulted in an uproar. This “twitterstorm” might provide important lessons for practicing science communicators. The first lesson outlined in this letter is about the use of analogy in science communication, and the second is about how emotion is addressed in science communication.