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 importance of a smart, inclusive and sustainable development as well as their main determinants had benefit in the last decades of an emergent attention both in the current evolution of the mix set of socio and economic policies as well as in the theoretical and empirical research development. The paper focuses on the role of investments in human capital and innovation, two closely interrelated variables, for a smart, inclusive and sustainable development, within the European Union countries. Our main research results show that, at the EU level, there are significant differences between less inclusive and sustainable developed countries and, correspondingly, between more inclusive and sustainable developed countries in terms of investments in human capital (expressed by the Global Human Capital Index and tertiary educational attainment), on one hand, and the national innovation systems performances (as illustrated by the Summary Innovation Index and R&D intensity), on the other hand. Moreover, the correlation and regression analysis results suggest that existing gaps between inclusive and sustainable development, manifested at the EU level, can be explained by the level of human capital optimization and innovation performances. Therefore, more attention have to be paid to take some specific actions, especially in the less inclusive and sustainable developed countries (such as Romania, Greece, Spain, and Portugal, called also emergent countries) in order to improve innovation performance and the leverage of the human capital for the benefit of both individuals’ themselves and of the whole economy for increasing the inclusiveness and sustainability of development.

Due to a significant increase in electricity consumption globally, governments have to look and to identify better, more efficient and effective alternatives and sustainable energy sources to meet this high demand. This becomes more and more important in the context of implementing modern approaches such as those that might be applied in cases of smart cities and cultural and creative communities. Electricity can be produced based on conventional sources, but also on an emergent use of renewable sources. The electricity grid is usually designed as unidirectional. We consider that in case of smart cities and creative-innovative communities there is a need to implement mostly new smart grids that are bidirectional. This may allow and support the emergency of a new type of electricity user, called “prosumers”, who produces electricity from renewable sources, next uses & shares them smartly within the smart grid and finally stores them. Globally, photovoltaic energy prosumers are considered one of the most important actors in the energy transition and seem to be ready to introduce significant amounts of electricity within the grid. We anticipate that people living in households in smart cities and communities among most regions of the world will tend in the future to improve their self-consumption from the production of smart energy. This paper supports the idea that using mostly electricity from renewable alternative sources, especially solar, can be also developed with the help of households acting within smart cities and communities. The paper will also present briefly an overview of the scientific literature dedicated to this topic. We will also provide further interesting insights through a number of case studies representing good practices regarding prosumers in Italy and Romania.

The main goal of the paper is to highlight the importance of supporting the promotion of the culture of excellence among people involved in a way or another in contemporary business. In order to support business excellence, the culture of excellence have to empower and engage all the people within an organization to think out of the box in a modern vision suitable to the challenging and changing times we are facing now. All over the world, in the most competitive countries, regions and sectors of activities there is a paradigmatic change of business strategies and policies oriented more and more towards performance and excellence. The paper highlights the importance of promoting the culture of excellence in the contemporary changing business environment. It suggests an important shift from a perspective that focuses on the so called ‘hero of excellence’ towards promoting the culture of excellence among the whole organization. Within modern business, in order to face challenges of the changing times and to explore their opportunities all the people from an organization are considered to manifest as ‘heroes of excellence’ by co-creating and co-working together within creative and innovative teams. They have to contribute and to participate actively to assure, preserve and develop the competitiveness and well being of the whole organization. The paper supports a holistic, cross disciplinary and integrated vision. It is structured into three parts including: a brief literature review based on an overview of the current state of the literature dedicated to the topic of culture of excellence (part 1); presentation of the main steps of the process of building a sustainable high performance organization (part 2); a brief presentation of examples of best practice and case studied identified internationally (part 3); conclusions that highlight the importance of culture of excellence in changing and challenging times.