The main objective of this paper is to highlight the importance of core competences as an important catalyst to enable a sustainable transition of business models to Industry 5.0. According to our research based on a scientific methodology, we illustrated that Industry 4.0 might greatly affect the labor market by introducing ITC, AI, IR and AR that will change many jobs in most areas of activity. One alternative solution to diminish these negative effects is to accommodate and prepare the shift to a more human-centric approach. In order to better implement this alternative solution and to generate mid- to long-run positive effects (from an economic, social and environmental perspective), we consider it is imperative that human resources be prepared to understand and to use new technologies. We have focused our research context on European countries. We found that only a part of the European Union Member Countries benefit from the use of human resources with advanced digital skills. Under these circumstances, we consider that only some countries will be able to face the challenges generated by the transition to Industry 5.0, while others, the emergent countries, such as Romania, will have to intensify the complex process of designing competitive and coherent strategies and implement a more efficient and effective mix of policies. This will help to better capitalize the potential sustainable competitive advantage of industries 4.0 and 5.0.

The research proposed in this paper regards the appropriateness and possibility of enhancing digital marketing with IoT technologies. The contribution of this paper is a novel digital marketing conceptual framework based on the ubiquitous and pervasive IoT technologies, empowered by the synergies of edge, fog and cloud computing. Our proposal is grounded into the general framework of digital marketing research proposed by Kannan and Li, as well as on the comprehensive agent-based IoT paradigm, thoroughly analysed by Savaglio et al. This framework is capable to seamlessly support the emergent marketing approaches including: contextual marketing, intelligent marketing, and omniscient marketing. On the other hand, this proposal can also benefit from the techniques and methodologies for building secure and robust IoT systems that were recently proposed by Pešić et al, for increasing the security and trust of IoT-based digital marketing ecosystems.

The main objective of this research is to estimate the degree of real convergence of the countries that joined the European Union between 2004–2013 as an essential precondition for sustainable accession to the Euro Area. Through this study, we tried to create a clear, real and comparative image for the downward trend in the dispersion of the GDP/capita and the speed by which countries with different integration stages achieve the real economic convergence to equilibrium level. In this respect, we tested real convergence by regression models. Further, in order to verify the robustness of the results we applied a cluster analysis. The main results show that non-Euro Area countries have a tendency to individually reduce income disparities with the Euro Area average, but do not register a convergent economic growth and do not form a homogeneous convergence cluster, unlike the newer Euro Area Member Countries. Another representative result is that the Czech Republic seems to be the best prepared country to adopt the single currency in a sustainable way, while Bulgaria is at the opposite pole.

In this modern and blooming age of technology, tourism along with many other aspects of life are highly impacted by IT industry, especially the social media aspect, where everything is judged and interpreted. It is way simpler nowadays to find reviews online, with pictures included, about everything tourism-related such as places, museums, hotels, restaurants, even the locals. The impact of online information and personal opinions of people about destinations can be very influencing for different types of possible tourists in choosing their vacation or week-end getaway especially now in the growing age of social media, where users share every aspect of their lives, travelling included. We take a look at the various ramifications that computer science has over tourism in general and how it can be of use to the traveler of the 21st century via its many ways of digital interconnection.

Change is the single constant of our world. We have to face challenging, dynamic and turbulent times. The complexity and dynamics of our world requires a paradigmatic holistic vision that needs collaboration. Collaborative economics focus on trust and team building, established based on a complementary set of core competences where creative, talented and gifted people are mostly valued. Online collaborative platforms and digitalization had been widely developed. We consider that, under the broader umbrella of cultural and creative economy, people have to focus more on non-traditional organizational structures that are better functioning on local and regional levels. Cultural and creative cities facilitate constructive dialogue and interactions, stimulating intercultural sensitivity applying practical wisdom such as to better interact and develop professional and personal networking. Collaborative economics focuses on proving people care more about other human beings and thus they develop new organizational structures based on compassion, empathy, emotional intelligence that ask for an important mentality shift from social networking (such as Facebook) based on sharing information, data and knowledge towards more spiritual oriented organizations within which practical wise, creative and innovative solutions that focus on wisdom have to be facilitated. In the last decades human civilization had shifted step by step from an information-based society towards knowledge, creative and innovation based one. It is high time to be wise and to shift to practical wisdom based on ethical, moral and spiritual values.