Innovation, as a key driver of local economic growth and competitiveness, is one of the ideas of the Kopaonik Business Forum that could become a game-changer for the Serbian economy
Building a stronger national innovation ecosystem and investing in young, talented people could help boost innovations in Serbia. The country’s capability to innovate and bring innovation successfully to market will be an important determining factor of local economic development in the years to come.
Moreover, private sector companies should invest more in the latest technological development trends, to ensure the digitisation of processes and increases of value-added.
The Dual education system should support these processes, empowering talented youngsters to start their professional recognition much earlier and enabling them to contribute to private sector tech development, with new products, processes, design and services.
Several sectors are ideally positioned within the Serbian resources ecosystems: agro-tech business (“digital agriculture”), ICT, educational services…
Finally, the faster growth of the IT industry would be needed, as this industry could have a significant impact on the long-term growth of Serbia’s public and private sector actors.
IT has promoted itself through great export results in 2017 (over €900 million), mainly in outsourcing services and programming development.
A new sub-branch for this year will be IT security compliant services, driven by the new EU standard, GDPR. Several Serbian companies are already active in this field and we believe that the Government should support this trend.