To foster economic growth and job creation in Europe we need more entrepreneurs. To meet market demands we need to ensure Europeans hold the skills required to fill existing vacancies or start up on their own. To increase Europe’s competitiveness in the global economy we need to embrace innovation – embrace the future – and invest in the education of the next generation of workers.
Today, youth unemployment rates remain high, and the gap between the skills young people learn in school and those required for jobs in all sectors continues to grow, making it glaringly apparent that more must be done. We cannot let the number of youth not in education, employment or training (NEET), currently 7.5 million, continue to grow. We must act. We must work to instil key competences and skills in our young people.
The European Commission has repeatedly identified both increased entrepreneurship and the digital economy as key factors in advancing a healthy economic ecosystem in Europe, highlighting that investment “in entrepreneurship education is one of the highest return investments Europe can make.” According to the recent EU report “Entrepreneurship Education: A road to success,” students who have had entrepreneurship education are more likely to start their own venture, and their businesses tend to be more innovative and successful than those who have not.
The digital economy is “the single most important driver of innovation, competitiveness and growth.” It is increasing at a rapid annual rate of around 10%, outstripping most other sectors, and is additionally thought to account for as much as 5% of GDP in the G20 states by 2016. All this despite the fact that only 2% of European enterprises currently take advantage of digital opportunities and that by 2020 there will be an estimated shortage of 825,000 skilled ICT professionals across all sectors. This means that making digital capability an essential component of entrepreneurship education is critical.
Entrepreneurship skills and digital competences are as important for employability and business success as speaking more than one language. The entrepreneurial mind-set turns ideas into actions. For a starting entrepreneur, digital can make or break a business concept in its very nascent stages. All business will be digital in the future and digital skills will be required in 90% of all jobs. Yet, the digital divide grows and qualified ICT professionals are becoming increasingly rare. Now is the time to seize the moment and bridge the gap through increased education in digital entrepreneurship and skills.
The Entrepreneurial Skills Pass (ESP) was created to make sure that young people get a head start on receiving the right qualifications and skill-set to be successful in today’s global economy. The initiative was developed together with the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber (WKO), CSR Europe and the Danish Foundation For Entrepreneurship-Young Enterprise (FFE-YE) and co-funded by the European Commission with further support from a number of private enterprises – including Microsoft.
One of the success factors for entrepreneurship education is ensuring there are strong dynamic partnerships in place between schools and the business community. Moving into our third year of pan-European collaboration with Microsoft, we see the benefits of private sector partnerships first-hand. Microsoft employees share their skills and expertise with young people in the classroom and as e-mentors. They also underscore the message of how crucial digital is for success in any field.
Microsoft is one of the partners behind the ESP, which certifies that young people (15-19 years old) have had a real entrepreneurship experience and have the necessary knowledge to start a venture of their own or be successfully employed. Using key insights from business volunteers and teachers, students spend one year creating a mini-company and self-assessing their progress at two separate intervals. They are challenged on both their entrepreneurial and digital competences. Finally, at the end of the year students review their knowledge through a comprehensive final exam online. Unique in the competences it qualifies, ESP raises youth employability by bridging the skills gap – increasing their competitiveness in the markets of today and tomorrow.
The EU has said that ‘every young person should have a practical entrepreneurial experience before they finish school.’ Together with our partners, we call upon the public and private sectors to join forces so that more young people can benefit from opportunities like the ESP. Many employers and institutions, including Microsoft, have already endorsed the Entrepreneurial Skills Pass. Only by increasing the pool of well-qualified young people entering the economy will we be able to offset skills gaps and the challenges of youth unemployment.