DIGA Project Holds Dissemination Event in Brussels, Introduced by Alessia Mosca MEP

October is proving a very international month at The Women's Organisation with project work in Asia and across Europe! Our CEO Maggie O'Carroll and Principal Consultant & Project Manager Lisa McMullan headed to Brussels to hold a special event on 12th October as part of the DIGA (Digital Innovations for Growth Academy) project. 

The event invited MEP's and enterprise experts from across Europe to meet together and hear about the findings of the DIGA project, and to look at the learning programme that has been developed to enable enterprise trainers and educators to effectively support entrepreneurs to think digital while growing their businesses. 

The event was opened be MEP Alessia Mosca who introduced Anna Danti, Policy Officer with European Commission DG for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs giving an overview of how the European Commission is committed to supporting women entrepreneurs. 

Opening Speech from MEP Alessia Mosca

Dr Briga Hynes from DIGA partners Kemmy Business School at the University of Limerick presented the key findings from the initial research conducted through the DIGA Project, reflecting on how that has influenced the project development so far.  Click here for a summary of those findings presented by Briga. 

Next up was DIGA Project Manager Lisa McMullan from The Women's Organisation.  Lisa talked through the learning modules that have been developed through the project which have recently been pilotted across Europe with Enterprise Trainers and Educators, upskilling them in key digital competancies related to enterprise so they can better advise the businesses they are working with.   The modules cover:

Dr Briga Hynes Discussing DIGA Research Findings

1.Enhancing digital awareness and knowledge
2.The role and use of digital technologies and their benefits to business
3.Making digital deliver for the start-up and small business
4.Enabling and supporting the development of an entrepreneurial digital strategy
5.Designing integrated digital competence entrepreneur support/programmes

Once the DIGA Programme had been presented, female entrepreneurship specialist Madi Sharma Hosted a panel discussion around 'Digital Innovation to Promote Entrepreneurship'. Joining the panel were:

Panel:
• Theresa Griffin, MEP European Parliament, UK
• Martha Ivanovas, Government Affairs Manager Dell
• Janne Elvelid, Policy Officer DG CONNECT, European Commission
• Maggie O´Carroll, Chief Executive Officer, The Women´s Organisation (DIGA Partner)
• Caridad Martinez Carrillo de Albornoz, CEO Inercia Digital (DIGA Partner)

Panel Discussion

Key themes arising from the discussion included:

• The importance of using our practical research from DIGA and the experience of the expert organisations involved to influence European Policy, and connecting with our MEP's to help influence the policy agenda.

• The need for digital economy policy and initiatives to be gender-proofed to strengthen and improve the sustainability of more small businesses It was interesting to see good practice examples from the private sector highlighted by colleagues from Dell around supporting start up s and women entrepreneurs.

It was great to connect with other EU Projects as part of the event, finding out a bit more about 'WEHubs' a European Project aimed at supporting Women Web Entrepreneurs. 

The event concluded with a round up courtesy of Eva Fabry, Director of DIGA Partners European Centre for Women and Technology. 

We'd like to thank our UK MEP's Julie Ward and Theresa Griffin for supporting the event. 

To find out more about the Erasmus Plus funded project 'DIGA' please click here. 

DIGA Research Findings - Breakdown by Briga Hynes

The Digital Innovations for Growth Academy operates as a Strategic Partnership from seven member states and is involved in the enhancement of digital competencies of entrepreneurs and owner-manager through the provision of appropriate small firm context digital training programmes. The development of such training programmes is underpinned by an informed understanding of the current status and practices of digital in the entrepreneurial context. To achieve this objective an empirical research study was undertaken with a sample of entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial educators and trainers and entrepreneurial learners to ascertain the predicaments they encounter in the adoption of digital and what their needs are in terms of addressing these quandaries. The multi country study (United Kingdom; Ireland; Slovenia; Spain; Lithuania; Bulgaria and Finland) returned a response of 482 usable surveys.

Overall, survey results show that many small businesses are engaging with digital technologies and demonstrate intent to increase their usage of tools to extend into online selling, online networking and ecommerce to a lesser extent.

There was a lack of a strategic perspective of integrating digital technology as part of the broader strategy for their enterprise where digital was viewed on the periphery and undertaken when needed.

A challenge for the surveyed firm, was how to more fully capitalise on the ever increasing opportunities presented by social and digital technologies, whilst balancing the use of those most relevant and appropriate ones to reduce a fragmented and piecemeal approach to achieving a non-measured set of tasks.  Related is the lack of clear measurement or tracking of performance from digital efforts and resources extended to digital media – this lack of measurement perhaps is linked to the absence of a clear set of objectives and fear and confusion as to the potential of digital for a small enterprise.

The ability and need for integrating digital into mainstream business activities is an area requiring attention and is a fundamental foundation on which any successful digital strategy is built on.   Entrepreneurs decide on training on a haphazard basis which may reflect the current or immediate needs of the entrepreneur and the stage of their company rather than a holistic and future planned approach.

Therefore capability and competency development are fundamental to enable and embed a digital mind set in the entrepreneurial context and should incorporate a digital learning pedagogy, which contains views on the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of digital as it applies to an entrepreneurial context, and which provides opportunities for the learner to experience and learn ‘with’ and ‘from’ the entrepreneurial application of digital, thus instilling real world and relevant digital ‘know how’.

Dr. Briga Hynes,

Kemmy Business School

Further reflections from DIGA findings so far can be downloaded in two summary reports also prepared by Briga Hynes:

• Going Digital in the Small Firm – Is it all about technology!!! 
• Adopting Digital – Digital Dilemma’s Encountered in the Entrepreneurial Context

DIGA Partners Meet in Maribor

Last week some of The Women's Organisation team headed to Maribor in Slovenia as part of the DIGA Project. DIGA brings together expertise from organisations in UK, Ireland, Slovenia, Norway, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Spain to develop an innovative ICT and digital training programme for staff delivering vocational education and training in the fields of entrepreneurship and business development.

The purpose of the meeting in Maribor was to deliver a knowledge transfer workshop to ensure programme delivery staff from each partner organisation have a shared understanding of the draft programmes and resources available so far. The DIGA collective also shared trainer case study examples for final evaluation report and the essential messages and stakeholders to be targeted for dissemination in the next six months including a Brussels multiplier event. Following the progress of the meeting a pilot of the training will now go ahead early summer 2016 to test the learning and development so far achieved on the project. 

Operations Manager for The Women's Organisation Laura Anderson felt the visit to Maribor was great for the learning of the team particularly for "personal learning, expanding our knowledge of new online tools such as Google Garage".

Laura went on to say the highlight of the trip for her was "Sharing knowledge and expertise" and said of the transnational meetings as a whole "I always come away with some interesting facts or programmes I had never heard of and come away thinking I will look into that further once home. As well as knowledge its also really nice to build relationships with external partners."

From the photos taken it also looks like sampling the local cuisine was a big plus of the visit! (The way to our hearts is definitely through our stomachs).

We'd like to thank our partners from Economic Institute of Maribor, Human Resource Development Centre for their hospitality and we look forward to catching up following the delivery of the pilots. 

For more information on the DIGA project including latest news and findings please visit www.thewomensorganisation.org.uk/projects-and-partnerships/diga