Business schools from these two countries (Antwerp School of Management and TIAS in Tilburg): supported by the guidelines for curriculum development which have been developed as part of the European Commission e-leadership initiative (www.eskills-guide.eu) – demonstrated how they are going to deliver new curricula in the future to promote e-leadership, covering organisation leadership in ICT innovation to deliver business value.

The expert panel emphasised that the rapid development in ICT is transforming business models and that it should be seen as an opportunity not a threat and use IT as an enabler. Organisations need to build the capabilities for this and this is where e-leadership skills come into play. Today we can very often observe a failure in internal communications resulting in failure of translating a management strategy into an operation plan. Development of an appropriate ‘ecosystem’ was seen as another key direction for closing the skills gap since interaction with the mobilisation of like-minded individuals was seen as essential to keep up with the pace of change. This requires e-leaders needing continuous interaction with a network of likewise people to keep up and to keep pace. The strong point is that in the future young people will not accept working in a company which is not adapting to that model.

Prof. Steven de Haes, Antwerp School of Management, at the event on ‘New Curricula for e-Leadership – Delivering Skills for an innovative and competitive Europe’ organised under the umbrella the European Commission’s initiative to promote e-Leadership, together with Antwerp School of Management being part of the University of Antwerp, the CIO Forum Belgian Business and EuroCIO: European CIO Association on 4th September 2014 in Antwerp.

The full summary report can be downloaded here