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Entrepreneurship in Europe and beyond

By on January 16, 2013 in Europe, Management, Post

The European Commission (EC) believes that entrepreneurship is a key enabler in improving Europe’s performance in economic reform, social cohesion and employment.  The promotion of entrepreneurship and self-employment in included in the EC’s 2020 strategy.

The Commission is focusing on encouraging unemployed people to start their own businesses and supporting social entrepreneurs.  It has been studying the development of entrepreneurship in Europe for over ten years and the results of the latest survey reveal the current situation in the EU and beyond – including 13 non-EU countries including Brazil, India and Russia.

Key findings

Attitudes to self-employment

  • 58% of EU residents would prefer to be an employee
  • 37% favour self-employment (down from 45% in 2009)
  • Self-employment is generally more popular with non-EU respondents.  In particular, there are high levels of people in favour of self-employment in Brazil (63%) and Turkey (82%)
  • Reasons for stating self-employment is not feasible include
    • The current economic climate
    • Lack of capital
    • Lack of skills
    • Risk of failure
    • Family commitments
    • 23% of EU respondents have started a business or are thinking about doing so

Why be self-employed?

  • Self-fulfillment, personal independence and freedom to choose the time and place of work are all popular reasons for EU respondents to consider self-employment.

Factors in choosing self-employment

  • Having an appropriate business idea (87%)
  • Having access to financial resources
  • Contact with an appropriate business partner (68%) and having a role model (62%)
  • Dissatisfaction with previous work situation (55%)
  • Fewer respondents are concerned about bankruptcy (43% down 6% since 2009) and irregular income (33% down from 39% in 2009)

Attitudes to entrepreneurs

  • 87% of EU respondents believe entrepreneurs are job creators
  • 79% believe they create beneficial products and services
  • 57% believe they take advantage of other people’s work
  • 52% would rather work for a family business, with 48% citing a stronger commitment to the community

The full report is available here.

European businesses and information risk

By on June 15, 2012 in Europe, Information Security

Although intellectual property can represent a high percentage of a company’s value, a significant proportion of organisations are failing to protect their information assets.

According to research undertaken by Iron Mountain and PwC, European businesses are not taking the protection of corporate secrets and intellectual property (IP) as seriously as other information risk issues.

The research shows that only 41% of mid-sized European businesses have plans to protect intellectual property and that 54% of companies believe that safeguarding this type of information is less important than protecting financial, customer and employee information.

Four industry sectors (financial services; insurance; manufacturing; pharmaceuticals) in six European countries (France, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Spain, UK) were analysed.  The pharmaceutical industry, despite being IP intensive, performed the worst – only 30% of the companies include IP in their information risk management and data protection plans.

Companies should focus beyond the direct cost of data loss or theft and take into account other, less direct costs, such as the potential impact on brand reputation and public trust.  According to the research, the best companies:

  • Treat information as a board room issue
  • Have a balanced information strategy – which is regularly monitored
  • Have a multi-disciplinary team in charge of information risk

A summary of the report (Information Risk Maturity Index) is available here.

Rebuilding Europe’s skills can generate growth

By on May 1, 2012 in Europe

The economic situation in Europe is challenging to say the least.  Unemployment has grown dramatically since 2008 and economic growth is stagnant.  Although human capital is a critical driver of economic growth, 86% of European employers have cut or frozen their skills and training budgets in the last year. Paradoxically, 43% of the respondents reported at least a moderate skills shortage in their organisations or sectors.

500 senior decision makers across a number of sectors were questioned in a survey carried out by Accenture on behalf of the Federation of Enterprises in Belgium.

The Accenture report focuses on three key challenges currently facing the European skills markets:

  • Untapped talent

The report calls for initiatives to help bring 25 million unemployed people and a further 15 million ‘discouraged’ people into the workforce.  (‘Discouraged’ people include older people, women with children and young people who have withdrawn from the world of work because of a lack of opportunities.)

  • Transferable skills and mobile workforces

Barriers to skills transfer are not only national.  Some organisations have trouble identifying and maximising their internal talent pools.

  • Lack of collaboration between sectors

There is scope for improvement when it comes to planning and managing shifts in employment patterns and labour markets.

The report makes a number of recommendations for stakeholder groups, including policy makers, educational institutions, employers and others.  Key recommendations include:

Actions for employers

  • Invest in data and analytics to profile and track internal talent
  • Offer flexible working options
  • Increase job rotations within organisations and collaborate with others in the same sector.
  • Build partnerships between small and large firms within supply chains to improve skills levels.

Actions for policy makers

  • Improve recognition of skills and qualifications across Europe
  • Simplify regulations regarding global talent recruitment
  • Support partnerships between businesses and education

 

Digital natives not all ‘e-skilled’

By on March 29, 2012 in Europe

This week is European e-skills week.  This campaign sets out to raise awareness of the value of e-skills in Europe’s employment market.

According to figures released by the EU, the ICT sector is directly responsible for 5% of European GDP, employing 5.8 million people.  In the economic downturn people with fewer e-skills have experienced more difficulties in the labour market and this trend is set to continue – it is predicted that by 2015, 90% of all jobs, across all sectors, will require ICT skills.  The campaign also suggests that just because young people are ‘digital natives’ this does not necessarily mean they are ‘e-skilled’.

The campaign has pulled together the results of a number of research projects and has highlighted some interesting trends and statistics:

  • The number of computer science graduates has been declining across most of Europe since 2006.  Only Germany and Poland are bucking this trend.
  • Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom and Luxembourg are the most ICT-specialised countries in Europe.
  • 58% of employers believed the education sector is not doing enough to prepare young people for the modern workplace
  • An average of 13% of young people across Europe are not using the internet regularly – in particular those with a low formal education.
  • Only 25% of young people across the EU consider that they have ‘high’ levels of basic internet skills (finding information via internet search engines; attaching files to emails; making internet telephone calls, file sharing and web page creation).
  • Only 10% of Europeans have created a web page (17 % of the highly educated; 7% of the low educated).

You can follow the links to the research and statistics from the original press release.

 

Everyone is talking but is anyone listening? Using social media to promote info services

By on December 9, 2011 in Corporate Environments, Europe, Social Media

There’s no doubt that, in some quarters at least, social media are replacing more traditional methods of communication. Earlier this week it was widely reported that French IT services giant Atos which employs 80,000 people is planning to ban the use of internal emails in favour of communication via other channels such as social networks, instant messaging and microblogging. 

A panel in the European Librarians Theatre at this year’s Online Information show, organised under the auspices of SLA, debated how to use social media tools to promote library services. The international panel featured Jo Alcock from Birmingham City University, Dennie Heye from Shell Information Technology International in the Netherlands, and Katrin Weller from Heinrich-Heine University in Germany.  

Jo had carried out an informal survey to find out how librarians in the UK were putting social media to work, and found a trend towards consolidating accounts and tools in order to streamline the wide variety of tools and services on offer.

The panellists agreed that were a number of obstacles that could impede the implementation of social media tools. Jo noted that senior management could be cautious, particularly given the experimental nature of some social media initiatives. Implementation can be time consuming, and this problem is exacerbated when staff don’t see the importance of the project. And in some settings, access to social media is banned altogether.

Katrin echoed the focus on experimentation and trial and error – a willingness to try things out and learn as you go is key to success in social media. There isn’t a manual!

From Dennie’s point of view, making the business case to senior management was all important. At Shell, they have introduced enterprise social network Yammer to enable communication between people working in different teams and offices. By focusing on its use as an IT support tool,  they were able to make a strong business case by showing that using Yammer freed up time for IT support staff.

Jo pointed out that librarians will need to exercise professional judgement in choosing the right tool for the job – for example public libraries will want to communicate with their patrons in specific ways which will be very different to the approach taken by a corporate information service; and there will be a difference between internal and external communications.

The panellists agreed that flexibility and personality were both key to the successful implementation of a social media strategy. Jo pointed out that you need to be able to adapt to changing expectations. Dennie recommended being yourself – an authentic, ‘human’ voice is much more effective than a personality-free corporate voice. For those wanting to take the plunge, Katrin suggested that you start by asking yourself ‘what will success look like’ so that further down the line you have something to measure against. This will also provide a touchstone to use when faced with choosing between the enormous range of social media tools out there.

Pirate Party’s success in Berlin

By on September 22, 2011 in Europe

For those who missed the story, the Pirate Party, dedicated to the freedom and transparency of internet traffic, has entered a state parliament for the first time.  The Party received almost 9% of the votes in the recent Berlin regional elections taking it comfortably over the 5% hurdle required to enter the city’s legislature.  The Party took 15 of the 149 seats available.

You can read an analysis of the political implications of this development on the Economist blog.  You can read more about the (apparently astonished) victors on this English language German news blog.

The cultured traveller in Europe

By on August 3, 2011 in Europe

Thanks to Library Stuff for highlighting this article in the New York Times written with the ‘cultured traveller’ in mind.  Readers are recommended to visit European city libraries because they offer ‘respite’ from the crowds.  Hopefully this is not a euphemistic way of saying they are underused.

Libraries recommended include the Austrian National Library in Vienna and the Strahov Monastery and Library in Prague.  If you feel your European library could benefit from cultured visitors from overseas, why not add in your own recommendations in the comments field on the New York Times website?  And share your suggestions here too!

The future of the Eurozone

By on May 12, 2011 in Europe, Post

A group of bankers and financiers gathered at a conference in Italy to discuss the Eurozone.  The event, co-sponsored by Wharton University, discussed a number of scenarios for the future of the Eurozone and the likeliehood of bailout defaults.

Many of the experts remained unconvinced by the optimistic picture being put forward by EU officials and suggested that defaults on bailout agreements were increasingly likely.  The Gold Standard was used as an historical exemplar.  When countries using the Gold Standard found themselves in financial trouble, they would simply leave the Standard and sort out their financial troubles before re-entering. Similarly, some of the attendees suggested that if countries found themselves unable to meet the repayment schedules, an exodus from the Eurozone might follow.

Many attendees felt that there was an unwillingness to even acknowledge such scenarios might happen. 

“European officials refuse to entertain the thought of any of the 17 eurozone members leaving the currency union, despite the drag on the long-term competitiveness of individual members and the growing unhappiness of their citizens living under the constraints of the euro”.

A full summary of the event is available on the Knowledge Wharton blog.

‘dot eu’ is five years old

By on April 11, 2011 in Europe

The .eu domain has been open to EU residents and organisations since early April 2006 and it is now the worlds’s ninth largest top level domain. 

.eu is more instantly recognisable that some other country domain codes and is more readily trusted.  Germany is responsible for the largest take-up of .eu (31% of the total) followed by The Netherlands and the UK.   More recently .eu has been growing faster in ‘newer’ member countries, including Estonia, Lithuania and Poland.

EU residents and  organisations established in the EU have been enttitled to

EU and me, me and EU

By on November 28, 2010 in Europe, Open Access

New Media Age reports on the launch of the new website that sets out to be an accessible resource for EU public information for a UK audience.

The website presents some positive stories of the work of the EU as well as publishing some EU ‘mythbusting’ content, some of which is highly entertaining (sadly, it turns out that the story ‘EU forces farmers to provide toys for pigs’ is untrue.