The main purpose of the present research is to establish an exploratory picture of innovativeness in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. The main trends and key determinants of innovativeness in the South Caucasus have rarely been investigated in mainstream economic research. However, the South Caucasus is a rapidly developing post-Soviet region, and it is geographically strategic for several key players in the global economy, including China and the European Union (EU). In fact, the role of the South Caucasus in international economic agreements is growing due to increased partnerships between Eastern and Western countries. Thus, the region’s current and future innovativeness will determine its integration into global value chains (GVCs). This study employs figure analysis to examine and compare the innovativeness of individual countries and the region as a whole against relevant economic and institutional indicators discussed in the literature. Using scatter plots, a polynomial trendline approach allowed the data to be divided into more meaningful periods of analysis to better understand peaks and dips in national innovativeness in association with selected economic and institutional indicators in the South Caucasus. Overall, the results show that economic growth and economic freedom play an important role in innovativeness in the South Caucasus, while institutional factors present more of a mixed picture. More specifically, the region’s overall innovativeness was positively correlated with rule of law and property rights to a certain extent, but this association was not consistent. In addition, Armenia and Georgia experienced higher growth in national innovativeness between 2011 and 2020, while this growth was weaker in Azerbaijan. This paper’s results may help the South Caucasus countries conceptualize their innovativeness in terms of the region’s overall innovativeness and key economic and institutional variables. Moreover, more sophisticated quantitative techniques and econometric models may be applied in future research.

One of the key challenges for businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic has been to maintain financial sustainability despite the public crisis and consumer demand shocks. While some companies have managed to digitize and cope with the new realities, others have not. This will determine the future of companies and the direction of anti-crisis tools in management strategies. The purpose of this study is to analyze the use of digitalization as an anti-crisis tool among Azerbaijani businesses during the Covid-19 outbreak. The data set is based on voluntary survey data gathered from key businesses of the Azerbaijan economy. Our analysis applied k-means clustering, the related-samples Wilcoxon Signed Rank test and the independent-samples Mann-Whitney U test to learn whether there was any connection between digitalization and financial sustainability. Our findings indicate that 42% of the businesses that participated in the study obtained benefits by using digitalization as a crisis management tool during the Covid-19 pandemic period, but 38% of the respondents did not report any significant changes in their businesses despite increased digitalization efforts. Moreover, 20% of the businesses examined experienced negative changes after digitalization. The results of the independent-samples Mann-Whitney U test indicated that those businesses that had high scores before and after the increased digitalization efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic, achieved higher median profits, while the businesses with lower scores experienced a financial loss. As can be seen from the results, the chances of benefiting from digitalization are rather uncertain for local businesses. The main policy conclusion from this study is that businesses in Azerbaijan need to address the digitization challenge comprehensively to increase benefits and reduce costs. The results of our study are useful for business owners, policy makers, and top managers when developing strategies for enterprise-level digitization, especially during and after viral outbreaks.