Topic of the Conference

The world has just started to wake up from the social and economic shock the Covid-19 pandemic caused but instead of a gradual recovery and reconciliation, our world faces new challenges in the form of soaring energy and transportation prices, galloping inflation, and new conflicts should they be military confrontations or "just" political and diplomatic tensions.

While it was well known that the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the international supply and value chains, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, tensions around the Taiwan strait, rivalization for the Arctic areas seem to be a kind of introduction to a new cold war in the world. In such a political environment, the trends of globalization, moreover, the criteria of the investment-friendly economic environment have to be revised. The importance of the local and regional solutions come into the forefront, new - shorter, safer, and less costly - supply chains have to be developed. In general, both in business and in the society, the local, energy-saving solutions will gain importance. Therefore, especially in case of the energy-importer countries, like many of the Asian and European economies, this will be the way of the future. However, the way and the cost of such a realignment can be different from country to country. The increasing use of renewable energy sources, the progress in digitalization, and social awareness may give us hope that Asian countries will be able to give successful and beneficial responses to these challenges, like the development of smart cities and focusing increasingly on the locally available human and natural resources.

The goal of the OBIC Conference is to provide scholars and professionals with an excellent opportunity to exchange their views and share experiences in this broad field. PhD candidates are also welcome to present their most recent research in a separate panel.

Since Budapest Business School (BBS) focuses on applied sciences in its research agenda, the OBIC Conference would mainly invite papers focusing on the following topics - in relation to Asia - and arrange the panels according to them.

Suggested topics and panel themes:

• Energy security, use of renewable energy sources
• Climate change, global water crisis
• Political and economic challenges
• Global value chains
• Urbanization - smart cities
• Interregional economic, trade and investment relations
• Digitalization
• Science, technology and innovation (STI) and social development
• Migration

A glimpse into our Conference...

Photos of the Conference