The digitization of the economy is fundamentally changing the way enterprises operate. It is opening new chances for industry to become more efficient, to improve processes and to develop innovative products and services.
As estimated in several studies, the digital transformation process can add more than EUR110 billion of revenue in Europe in the next five years.
New technologies, such as ICTs (information and communication technologies), are a key engine for growth, but they have to be fuelled by the ideas of highly-skilled professionals and business leaders. Nowadays, many European companies, particularly SMEs and start-ups, are often lacking of professionals with the proper skills to put these technologies to effective use, and the risk of wasting their investments and missing key opportunities for growth and competitiveness is high. All across Europe there is a growing need of leaders capable of identifying and designing business models by exploiting key innovation opportunities and by making best use of ICTs.
The project “eLead – Enhancing VET professionals skills for e-leadership education and training” intends to fill this gap by creating educational material for VET professionals involved in training processes for workers and managers in high-tech/digital sector, in order to implement and promote training paths for the acquisition of e-leadership skills.
The kick off meeting of the project, co-funded by the Erasmus + Programme, has been held on the 26 of November in Pesaro. The Belgian-Italian Chamber of Commerce is part of the consortium composed of seven partners from five different European countries (Italy, Belgium, Netherland, Spain and Greece).
The first result of the project will be a competence map describing the High-tech leader professional profile in terms of units of learning outcomes. This will provide a clear and agreed definition and metrics for measuring innovative e-leadership skills and their implications on innovative job profiles based on European standards (ECVET and EQF).
The map will be created through a comparison of the key activities to be carried out by High-tech leaders in partner countries and is based on a clear definition of the high-tech leader profile.
The second intellectual output will consist of a Pedagogic Handbook dedicated to VET professionals, including resources to support the implementation of a training course for high-tech leaders.
Finally, the project will lead to the creation of a training course for high tech leaders, delivered as a MOOC (massive open online course) through an interactive platform.
These activities will contribute to the supply of high-tech leaders in Europe, by providing VET professionals with specific knowledge, skills and competences necessary to promote the acquisition of e-leadership skills.