JA Worldwide nominated for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. Read more.

Blog

Engineering ideas for a digital future

Trudy Norris-Grey, Managing Director Central & Eastern Europe, Public Sector Microsoft (JA Board Member)

The digital economy is growing at seven times the rate of the rest of the economy. In order to increase growth and create employment, Europe needs to accelerate the transformation of its business landscape through advanced digital technologies.

In particular, SMEs and startups need to be encouraged and supported by the public and private sector to take full advantage of the wide economic opportunities technology offers. Digital entrepreneurship will play a key role in changing the business landscape in Europe and digital skills will have a major influence on this continuous process.

We cannot expect every young person to start a business, but we need to encourage every young person to frame an idea, validate it and create something, which can contribute to society and to their own lives. For that reason, youth also need to be given the right tools and support to become the creators of our future digital society and economy. We recognize this and in traveling throughout Europe, it is clear that government ministers, educators and businesses acknowledge this need as well. So, what collectively can we do to address this?

It is critical to develop partnership solutions, like the Entrepreneurial Skills Pass (ESP), with educators, business and the non-profit sector. Therefore, Microsoft wants to drive the awareness and implementation of the Entrepreneurial Skills Pass to ensure that digital skills are incorporated in basic entrepreneurial education and entrepreneurship competencies are recognised on the European labour market. We believe that the ESP is not only a fantastic tool to help students shape their entrepreneurship education needs and to direct them towards gaining the necessary knowledge, skills and competencies to start a business or be successfully employed. ESP is also a unique qualification that will help them prove to employers that they have had a real entrepreneurship experience.

Microsoft is delighted to continue the collaboration with Junior Achievement Europe for a third year at pan-European level. This partnership has proven to be successful in combining our goals for the development of digital and entrepreneurial skills and to deliver powerful training to the Junior Achievement Europe students across the region. We are enthusiastic to be working together with Junior Achievement on their new Coding Framework and Digital Roadmap as well as initiatives like the e-Leaders-for-a-Day, Entrepreneurial Skills Pass and European Entrepreneurial Education NETwork (EE-HUB).

Category : Entrepreneurship, JA Europe Network, Entrepreneurship Education Posted : 7 May 2015 09:15 UTC
About the Author
Trudy Norris-Grey, Managing Director Central & Eastern Europe, Public Sector Microsoft (JA Board Member)

Trudy has a breadth of experience in a range of high tech industries. Her career was grounded in financial roles moving to senior management positions that have been client-focused with substantial P&L responsibility. Trudy is someone who is intensely client-focused, and she believes that the best way to succeed is by continually exceeding client expectations. She is known as someone who can deliver for the customer by taking new strategic approaches and implementing innovative solutions to the betterment of all involved.

Trudy is the Managing Director for Public Sector in Central and Eastern Europe within Microsoft.

 

Related Articles

We updated our privacy policy which has been specifically adjusted to reflect the new GDPR regulation Learn more.

I accept cookies from this site: