Over the last decade, promotion of competitiveness represents one of the central goals of economic policy of most of the countries. Moreover, in recent years, the promotion of competitiveness has been seen as a way of achieving desirable changes in economy and society. While there is no unity of views in the theory regarding the conceptual definition of the phenomenon of competitiveness, it is becoming less arguable that in strictly economic terms, competitiveness is a synonym for productivity. However, it should be noted that productivity growth that is accompanied by increasing social imbalance (for example, inequality in income distribution), on the one hand, and environmental pollution, on the other hand, cannot be a guarantee of improving the competitiveness of countries in the long run. Acknowledging precisely this fact and using the data from World Economic Forum on Global Competitiveness 2013, this paper elaborates on the phenomenon of sustainable competitiveness and tests the hypothesis about the positive impact of its social and environmental dimension on the economic dimension of sustainable competitiveness that is represented by the value of the Global Competitiveness Index. The survey of 34 countries confirmed the indisputable positive impact of the social dimension of sustainability, but also variable direction of the impact of the environmental dimension of sustainability (depending on the level of GDP per capita) on the economic dimension of sustainable competitiveness of European countries in 2013.

Given that innovativeness stands for one of the most significant categories in the process of investigating key economic phenomena, including competitiveness of economy, the paper will: a) explain the metrics of The Global Innovation Index and The Global Competitiveness Index, as two undoubtedly most significant analytical frameworks for expressing the achieved level and key determinants of innovativeness, on the one hand, and the factors of countries' competitiveness at the global level, on the other hand, and b) provide empirical analysis of the correlation between innovativeness and competitiveness of the Western Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro), the European Union member states from the region (Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia). After applying the adequate methodology, a conclusion was made that: a) Western Balkan countries lag behind the European Union member states in the level of innovativeness, and b) from the aspect of correlation between innovativeness and countries' competitiveness, statistically significant correlation has not been determined for the Western Balkan countries, unlike selected EU member states where a strong linear correlation between these variables has been determined in 2012.