JADE Spring Meeting 2015- Europe’s Junior Entrepreneurs together for 4 days of networking, workshops and forward thinking

The status quo of entrepreneurship – a new challenge?

Not long ago, Europe’s crisis changed the mentalities of many about the traditional economy and industry leaders everywhere turned their heads towards youth, especially the unemployed. Knocking at the door is the fact that innovation only is not going to solve many problems and entrepreneurship has become key to a more active and efficient occupation of the workforce.

Following the belief that it is not Europe who is changing the youth, but rather youth who are changing Europe, JADE is continuing its yearly tradition by organising JADE Spring Meeting 2015, putting the minds of its Junior Entrepreneur participants at work for the theme:

Challenging the entrepreneurship Status Quo

Is Europe an environment that helps fostering entrepreneurship? Is its entrepreneurial ecosystem actually good at supporting youth to create new jobs? Mr. Steven Price (Moderator – CEO of European Institute for Industrial Leadership), Ms. Alexa Joyce (Director of Policy, Teaching and Learning Worldwide Education – Microsoft), Mr. Alessandro Cenderello (Managing Partner EU Institutions – EY), Mr. Florian Iwinjak (Programme and Liaison Officer – UNIDO) and Mr. Marko Curavic (Head of Unit ‘Entrepreneurship’, DG Enterprise and Industry – European Commission) are debating all together during the event Opening Ceremony, after a welcome speech by JADE President, Ioana David, and a keynote speech by MEP José Manuel Fernandes.  After the debate, participants will have the chance to vote on their opinion about the topic.

Ms. Karen Wilson ( Senior Fellow at Bruegel Think Tank ) and Mr. Jacques Ragot (Director Global Public Affairs at Bayer MaterialScience) are going to pinpoint as well on some critial points linking youth and entrepreneurship. Last but not least, Mr. Mario Tarouca, Treasurer of JADE will present the report of Generations Club 2014 – Youth Perception on Entrepreneurial Skills, the previous JADE event which gathered 13 of the most important youth NGOs representing 17 million students Europe-wide.

Pointing towards what matters

One of the focuses of the event is to give our participants space for networking, exchange of best practices and the opportunity to value the internationalization experience.  Our guest workshop givers have been instructed specifically to focus on entrepreneurial skills development and attitudes such as opportunity perception and risk taking. Last but not least, the impact of technology has been included in the content of the event, as it brings entrepreneurs everywhere the tools and means to learn and to progress faster. These themes have been carefully selected from the sub-indexes of The Global Entrepreneurship Index 2015, and they represent key areas of intersection between JADE’s mission and the status quo of entrepreneurship in Europe, as recent results show. We believe that Europeans need to accept differences and to foster the values of diversity, and thus we want to encourage cooperation between our members through sustainable business relationships.

These relationships don’t just happen. They require Junior Entrepreneurs coming together in the same place and seeing with their eyes that a united Europe is possible and that being together brings tangible benefits for them at local level.

Excellence Awards – The biggest and the most of the Junior Enterprises

The congress is also marked by a competition between the 280 European Junior Enterprises, for 6 prizes: Most Innovative Project, Most Social Responsible Project, Most International Junior Enterprise, Most Entrepreneurial Junior Enterprise, Most Promising Junior Enterprise and Junior Enterprise of the Year. Two finalists for each category will present themselves on the stage of the Opening Ceremony as they will be finally evaluated by our jury. The final decision will reflect in the announcement of the winner during the Gala Dinner, on the 7th of March. The two grand prizes, Most Promising Junior Enterprise and Junior Enterprise of the year, reflect the duality of Europe’s reality at the moment: that there is a developed part full of opportunity and conditions for natural progress, and yet another one where some are still developing, but with great, promising results.