Strengthening Slovak competitiveness through innovation & digitization: SAPIE actively participated at ITAPA

This week, ITAPA, the largest annual IT conference in Slovakia, takes place and welcomes up to 850 participants from various sectors including government, business, academia and NGOs. Topical highlights consist of governmental priorities in innovation and digital policies, the future of industry, tech transformation of health care, cybersecurity, rapid development of green technologies, to name but a few. 

Michal Číž, SAPIE’s program director, took an active role and presented ideas on how to keep the competitiveness of Slovak industries. The overall outlook is not very promising. The latest IMD’s World Competitiveness Ranking placed Slovakia in 53rd place, way below its neighbours - Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. High energy prices, geopolitical risks, the lack of labour force and mainly low investments into modernization are the main reasons why Slovak industry is gradually weakening its competitiveness. Therefore, it’s inevitable to seek a cross-sectoral approach and introduce measures that will mitigate the risks and lower the gap between Slovakia and other EU countries. 

Considering investments and reforms plans in both the National Recovery and Resilience Plan and Programme Slovakia, framework strategy for programming period 2021-2027, these are solid basis for supporting small and medium enterprises in their digital transformation as well as the support of new promising industries e.g. semiconductor production, space industry or development of green technologies. 

SAPIE is indeed very active in this field and provides consulting services to SMEs, through its HOPERO project, in the field of adoption of digital technologies, particularly artificial intelligence.