The article describes the use of the competence approach in management practice, its connection with the acceleration of innovation processes, complexity of the applied technologies, flexibility in a dynamic external environment, when not only the availability of resources becomes important, but also the possibility of using them to ensure the sustainability and competitiveness of the organization. The analysis proves the complexity, multiplicity and interdisciplinarity of the concepts associated with the competence approach and classification of competencies, as well as with the absence of industry specificity in the construction of a typology of competencies. The high-tech products production requires going beyond the enterprise, since it is necessary to combine the efforts of several teams and even organizations to create complex innovative products. For the development of high-tech solutions, the search and integration of both internal and external capabilities becomes necessary. The high-tech innovative potential enterprises are based on the most sophisticated equipment and high technologies, highly skilled labor resources. Therefore, the task of forming and developing staff competencies at high-tech enterprises is becoming urgent. There have been listed consistent tendencies of using the concept of “competency”, pointed out the key features of competencies: flexibility and changeability, orientation toward executing functional (professional) tasks, dependency on a person’s motivations and values. There are discussed the traditional approaches to the typology of staff competencies. The architecture of competencies proposes taking into account the requirements for high-tech enterprises staff knowledge, skills and abilities. The rationale for identifying a special group of system competencies is given.