e-Leadership is of crucial importance for companies – especially SMEs and start-ups - and industry to excel in their business operation. For effective e-leadership, the skills required are seen as those which enable people with very strong ICT skills to lead qualified staff from ICT and other disciplines towards identifying and designing business models and exploiting key innovation opportunities. Their success is defined as making best use of developments in ICT and delivering value to their organisations. Demand is growing throughout European industry to improve the quality of e-leadership, covering organisation leadership in ICT innovation to deliver business value. Research has confirmed a significant shortage of e-leadership skills across Europe - a call for action.
The European Commission e-Leadership initiative started in 2013 has focused on the leadership needs of top decision-makers and professional leaders at larger enterprises. These leaders oversee portfolios of both well-defined and emergent innovation opportunities. Successful design and implementation requires developing and engaging highly qualified staff to achieve the target value. With this further initiative on ‘e-leadership Skills for SMEs’ which started in 2014 the Commission is now targeting SMEs and start-ups.

The objectives of the event are to:

• Inform startups and SMEs about the e-skills programmes available across Europe and encourage them to share their experience with the programmes availability and affordability
• Discuss the accessibility of e-skills education for startups and SMEs with the university representatives, startup founders, companies providing the employee perspective, public sector, and private e-skills providers
• Serve as a platform for ideas exchange between startups and educational providers to facilitate communication on the e-skills needed, on the room for improvement and on the roles universities and other establishments should play
• Encourage innovative companies to make use of e-skills programmes and to facilitate access to these for the broader audience, and to team up with educational establishments to design courses that are needed and deliver value to their business and society
• Demonstrate the lessons learnt to all the stakeholders to further their efforts to promote innovation through better access to e-skills

This event is targeted at innovative employers especially from SMEs and start-ups, entrepreneurs, current and aspiring e-leaders, professional associations, universities and public sector interested in promoting digital skills and developing appropriate national policies and initiatives of different type and in different policy areas.

There is no charge to attend the event.

To register, please click here:

e-Leadership Flyer
You can obtain background research on the e-leadership topic by accessing a flyer at the following web site: http://eskills-guide.eu/documents/

Event Secretariat:
Mira Zöller: mira.zoeller(at)empirica(dot)com
Werner B. Korte: werner.korte(at)empirica(dot)com

Venue