Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv: Navigating education as a frontline during times of war

Technological changes that come with industrial revolution have largely affected businesses, as well as society. With the current technological shift and Fourth Industrial Revolution, many questions arise regarding the impacts and effects on current ways businesses operate. This study presents a retrospective analysis and overview of previous industrial revolutions. The aim of the retrospective analysis is to identify common characteristics that may lead to lessons learned for the forthcoming Fourth Industrial Revolution and thus complement the current debate on technological change. All previous industrial revolutions have led to change in business environments and new challenges for managers and owners. The findings show that all previous revolutions have led to increase in the number of service jobs created. The key approach of successful countries during the times of industrial revolution has included education as the source of new skills and knowledge necessary for adaption. Countries that were able to produce high skilled people could not only invent, but also adapt to new technologies sooner than others. Similarly, these approaches included introduction of new managerial practices in order to be able to utilize new technologies and new skilled workers effectively. The research article processes secondary data together with literature review on this topic.

The article deals with eSports as a perspective kind of commercial activity. The research urgency is determined by the fact that, given the active increase of eSports market with growth rates of more than 30% per year, the types of commercial activities in this field and in scientific papers are not studied in an adequate degree.

The purpose of the article is to evaluate the commercial activity development in eSports and to determine the perspectives for its further growth in Ukraine. In order to determine the key types of commercial activity in eSports, the main sources of revenue in this area compared to sports were investigated, which showed a large unrealized potential for increasing revenues from the sale of tickets to competitions, the realization of broadcasting rights and merchandising. The study also showed that the largest number of income sources in eSports is at the stage of cyber-tournaments, which can be explained by a large consumer audience at this stage. However, unlike the esports world practice, computer game producers and well-known manufacturers of consumer goods in Ukraine do not finance domestic competitions, and, therefore, this stage of commercial activity remains at a low level. In modern conditions, among the types of eSports activities in Ukraine, only the computer games production and the cyber-racers game are properly developed.

According to authors, to improve the eSports development in Ukraine, creating the national system of regular eSports competitions is needed, which will form the basis for the development of most types of commercial activities that are part of the cyber-tournaments. To do this, one needs to create appropriate platforms, as well as improve communications with fans in social networks and at amateur competitions. All this will make eSports a highly profitable business in Ukraine.

In the current conditions of the Ukrainian economy, which is characterized by crisis phenomena and frequent changes in legislation, the insurance organizations are facing a number of difficulties in maintaining their financial sustainability. Moreover, these processes take place under the increased requirements for solvency of insurers. However, a significant part of domestic insurance companies is financially unstable, which is conditioned not only by the lack of funds, but also by the low level of management. This situation hinders the further development of the insurance market in Ukraine and has a negative impact on all areas of the domestic financial system and prevents it from successful integration into the European financial field. In order to address this problem, it is necessary to distinguish the key groups of risks that affect the financial sustainability of insurance organizations, among which there are the following: insurance, strategic, market risk, risk of inefficient capital structure, risk of limiting the insurance company’s liquidity, tax risk, investment risk, operational risk, the risk of ineffective organizational structure of the enterprise, and information risk. It should be noted that under conditions of changing environment, the impact of these risks only increases, and therefore the task of minimizing the impact of these risks on the activities of insurance companies is highly important. Accordingly, the authors of the article proposed a four-stage strategy to manage the financial sustainability of the insurance company, the purpose of which is to identify the risks of limiting the insurer’s financial sustainability, their qualitative and quantitative assessment, as well as the development and implementation of appropriate measures to minimize and eliminate unacceptable consequences.