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 European Commission initiative found that closing the e-leadership skills gap requires a range of educational ecosystem actions. In particular it needs strong collaboration of demand and supply stakeholders to create new educational offers. Pilot work shows that this leads to innovative and relevant content for e-leadership programmes and courses.

The present event is one of five regional events organised by the European Commission across Europe. It is hosted by IE Business School.

The objectives of the event are to:

• Inform SMEs and start-ups about newly developed training and higher and executive education offers on e-leadership supporting them exploiting innovation opportunities emerging through developments in ICT and in delivering value to their organisation.
• Communicate the e-leadership and the lessons learnt from these developments and the teaching of first cohorts of participants in different types of courses and in different countries to all stakeholders and keen to promote innovation through e-Leadership.
• Inform about the European higher and executive education landscape and further training offers in the areas of e-leadership and digital entrepreneurship.
• Demonstrate to institutions, universities and business schools e-leadership courses developed and piloted in different contexts and countries and for different target groups as well as lessons learnt and guide education and training institutions to develop e-leadership programmes.
• Encourage employers – especially SMEs and start-ups - to make use of e-leadership programme and course offerings and to team up with education and training institutions to develop these in line with their needs.
• Inform policy-makers and government representatives interested in promoting digital innovation and developing appropriate national policies and initiatives of different type and in different policy areas about already existing successful national policies and initiatives in this area which they may want to take as inspiration and for their own work.

This event is targeted at innovative employers especially from SMEs and start-ups, entrepreneurs, current and aspiring e-leaders, professional associations, universities and business schools as well as (especially the morning session) policy-makers interested in promoting digital innovation and developing appropriate national policies and initiatives of different type and in different policy areas.

There is no charge to attend the event. Anyone expressing an interest will be sent a link to the outputs of this event.
Due to the need to balance the stakeholder groups, final acceptance of participation is by personal invitation. Acceptance will be confirmed within two weeks of registration.

Chairperson:  Alvaro Arenas, Director Área de Sistemas de Información y Tecnologías, IE Business School

MORNING SESSION:
e-Leadership policy and education and training landscape

Afternoon Session: e-Leadership for SMEs: Success Stories, Training Courses, Programmes, MOOCs

Co-organisers:

Collaborating organizations:

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/

For event details:
Kerry Rodríguez-McGreevy
IE Business School, rce-lead(at)ie(dot)edu

Event Secretariat:
Inna Bludova: inna.bludova(at)empirica(dot)com
Werner B. Korte: werner.korte(at)empirica(dot)com

empirica Gesellschaft für Kommunikations- und Technologieforschung mbH
Oxfordstr. 2
53111 Bonn
Germany
T: +49-228-98530-0
F: +49-228-98530-12
E: lead(at)empirica(dot)com
W: http://www.eskills-lead.eu

Event language
The conference language will be English
Venue
Aula Magna, IE Business School, Madrid, Spain

This event is organised as part of the service contract ‘e-Leadership Skills for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises’, launched by the European Commission Directorate-General Enterprise and Industry (DG ENTR). The initiative is developing targeted actions for start-ups and fast-growing SMEs to provide them with relevant, transnationally recognised e-leadership skills and qualifications for entrepreneurs, managers and advanced ICT users.
The initiative is contributing to the ‘Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs’, to the Commission’s communication entitled ‘Towards a Job-rich Recovery’, and to the follow-up of the Commission’s communication on ‘e-Skills for the 21st Century’, which presents a long-term EU e-skills agenda and is entitled ‘The Digital Agenda for Europe’.
The main focus of this service contract is on e-leadership in SMEs and start-up firms. e-Leadership has been defined as the accomplishment of a goal that relies on ICT through the direction of human resources and uses of ICT. This type of leadership is thus distinguished by the type of goal that needs to be accomplished and by the type of resources a leader must coordinate and align: both the goal and the resources involve using ICT.

e-Leadership is of crucial importance for companies  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.

e-Leadership skills refers to the skills which an individual in the modern economy requires to initiate and achieve innovation utilising ICT:

• Business Savvy: Innovate business and operating models, delivering value to their organisations
• ICT Savvy: Envision and drive change for business performance, exploiting digital trends as innovation opportunities
• Strategic Management capability: Lead inter‐disciplinary staff, and influence stakeholders across boundaries (functional, geographical).

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’ - started in 2014 – The Commission is now targeting SMEs and start-ups.

For more information please visit: www.eskills-lead.eu  and www.eskills-guide.eu