DEVELOPMENT OF ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITY, LABOR MARKET AND MODERN CHALLENGES OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Entrepreneurial activity has always been a major factor in the socio-economic development of any country in the world. This is especially evident in the discussion of the problems of economic growth, when the efficiency of the functioning of the entrepreneurial sphere within the country clearly determines both the rates of economic growth and the state of the social sphere and the well-being of the people. It is noteworthy that in modern conditions, against the background of the high importance of the formation of the knowledge economy, the innovative aspect of entrepreneurial activity in the context of all business entities is gaining special urgency. The effectiveness of the whole innovation process depends on the effective functioning of knowledge-based entrepreneurship. The aim of the research is to identify the requirements of the entrepreneurial field for human capital skills, to identify the imbalances in the labor market, to determine the compliance of the skills required for the teaching and learning activities of high schools, to identify the existing challenges and to formulate separate recommendations. The research process used the methods of induction, deduction, qualitative, quantitative, comparison, statistical analysis, benchmarking. The processing of existing literature, retrieval of statistical data (including with the direct assistance of the National Statistics Office of Georgia), automatic download of data (so-called scraping) from various employment sites, conducting surveys and in-depth interviews, sorting and quantitative analysis of retrieved data were included in the own research. The consideration of expert opinions is within the research. Research has shown that when considering the skills of entrepreneurs, as a starting point, the entrepreneurial activity in a particular country and the requirements for its development should be considered. It should be noted, however, that the labor market may not be able to meet the needs of the entrepreneurial sector (employers). On the other hand, the perceptions of the entrepreneurial subjects themselves about the required skills are often limited and conditioned by the relatively short-term current perceptions of the modern technologies of the entrepreneurial activity itself. The research and the analysis of the positive practical experience of the developed countries of the world clearly showed that in this regard, close cooperation with universities in the field of entrepreneurship in the form of entrepreneurship training and short-term courses will be effective. The involvement and support of the state in the development and implementation of innovative entrepreneurial policies would also be important here.