DIGITAL SME Summit – Building European technological leadership [Promoted content]

Europe needs a new vision how to close the gap with its digital competitors. The DIGITAL SME Summit will demonstrate that this vision can only begin by putting SMEs, the majority of Europe’s industrial base, at the centre of all actions.

Oliver Grün is the President of the European DIGITAL SME Alliance.

In 2019, Europe was set on a mission to finally become fit for the digital age. Four years later, significant progress has been made in all areas of the digital transition. Yet, it is safe to say that the continent remains far from achieving digital leadership.

Evidence recently released by the European Commission seems to confirm this claim. Only 11% of European businesses have taken up Artificial Intelligence and only 19% of them have adopted Big Data. The EU currently relies on foreign countries’ imports for over 80% of digital products, services and infrastructure. The train of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is about to depart; Europe is still stuck in traffic, on the way to the train station.

So, the main question becomes how can we close this gap and achieve technological leadership by 2030? It’s apparent that the old way of doing things has not worked and that Europe needs a brand-new blueprint to achieve its Digital Decade goals.

Any new blueprint for Europe’s digital transformation must start by placing the digital industry at the heart of all its efforts and by understanding the true strengths of this industry: the digital SMEs and startups. Europe’s SMEs represent majority of the Single Market and account for around 60% of total employment across all EU Member States. SMEs are often generally seen as victims of digitalization because they need to catch up. However, this completely overlooks the fact that the provider side of digitalization in the B2B-Area, the digital economy itself, is also completely dominated by SMEs. So Europe’s digital small and medium sized enterprises, including startups and scaleups, are the providers of software and services that enable of digital transformation of all other companies and public administrations, especially the small and medium sized ones. Europe’s digital companies are the main actors that can deliver an alternative paradigm of technology that is more sustainable, inclusive and human centric. Only by doing so, Europe will achieve its digital leadership.

Europe has no choice. Digital regulation alone will not make us less dependent on foreign technologies that cannot be disjointed with foreign economic and political influence. Europe must take a strong stance in support of its digital industry, in particular of its digital SMEs.

At the European DIGITAL SME Alliance we are convinced that our companies can deliver a sustainable, inclusive and human centric technological alternative and we call for a strong public-private partnership with the EU institutions and national governments.

The first edition of the DIGITAL SME Summit, hosted on November 13^th at the European Economic and Social Committee, is a unique opportunity to showcase to ambition of Europe’s digital SMEs and to set a new vision for Europe technological leadership.

At the summit, Vice-President Jourova, Commissioner Ivanova and former President of Estonia Kersti Kaljulaid, together with EU decision-makers and leading SME Entrepreneurs discuss many of the key questions that Europe needs to address on the way to its digital leadership:  how to strike the right balance between innovation and safety in AI, how to achieve fairness in digital markets and curtail the dominance of gatekeepers, how standards and interoperability can enable smaller players to join forces and create alternatives to dominant foreign vendors, how to measure technologies’ net contributions to the green transition by cutting CO2 emission, and much more.

The DIGITAL SME Summit will showcase the proudness of Europe’s software industry, its digital SMEs that by leading the digital transformation are the core of our innovation economy.  Europe has a blueprint to untap the continent’s innovation potential: leverage the power of machine generated data to propel the digital revolution in all sectors, train the next generation of AI models, foster the adoption of new technologies, exploit the potential of blockchain, quantum computing, deep tech, make Europe’s industrial value chains cyber resilient. Only by becoming an innovation economy, Europe will foster its technological leadership.

An innovation economy propelled by SMEs needs digital skills. These must be the heart of the of Europe’s strategy. Without talents our digital companies won’t fulfil their ambition to grow and innovate. This is even more severe for smaller companies and startups that cannot compete with larger tech employers in attracting and retaining skilled people. While the Commission has designated 2023 as the European Year of the Skills, the DIGITAL SME summit will award the best practices of those SMEs whose contributions to re-skilling and upskilling are making a difference. With them, SkillNet Ireland, the business support agency of the Irish government, will showcase their experience and share experts insights to set a successful strategy for Europe’s upskilling. With an investment program of €70,2 million, SkillNet Ireland is already a world benchmark for its workforce development programs that have supported over 24.700 businesses and trained more 92.400 people.

Most importantly, DIGITAL SME Summit is the kick-off of a process, such that none of its sections will remain as one-off discussions. The Summit is the beginning of a consultation between EU decision-makers and a widest base of digital SMEs and other stakeholders to generate proposals for the EU institutions´ upcoming mandate. The pinnacle of this process will be DIGITAL SMEs’ Manifesto for 2030, setting a concrete vision for SME-led technological leadership.

We believe that in our efforts towards the digital transition, it’s time to borrow the practices of our fight against climate change. There, a new paradigm emerged when it became it became clear how urgent the green transition is and the scale of effort that is required to move away from fossil fuels. The new vision that emerged was the Green New Deal that argued for comprehensive and ambitious policies that would promote green transition while simultaneously promoting economic growth and social justice.

Now is the time to put forth a European Digital New Deal. To achieve our Digital Decade targets and close the gap between Europe and its digital competitors we need a more ambitious approach. By putting SMEs at the heart of every effort, we will be able to create a more competitive, more innovative, and more resilient European digital ecosystem. We invite all stakeholders who share this vision to register and join us at the DIGITAL SME Summit and become part of this process.