The European Digital Forum is uniquely positioned at the interface of technology, web entrepreneurship, innovation and public policy. In addition to connecting key leaders in Europe’s entrepreneurial communities, the European Digital Forum makes sure that it provides leading-edge content and value – be it in the form of innovative research, top-level engagement opportunities at events or as a Europe-wide platform.
EDFx is structured around six specific objectives:
Specific Objective 1: The promotion of tech/web entrepreneurship by organising and hosting events and serving as venues for web entrepreneurs, other businesses and policymakers. These are both stand-alone occasions and sessions within the programmes of major tech/web conferences, where EDFx strives to add a public policy angle, a pan-European take and link debates to the Startup Manifesto.
Specific Objective 2: Conducting innovative policy-oriented research. EDFx combines and builds upon the Lisbon Council’s and Nesta’s expertise to become a centre-of-excellence in technology, web/tech entrepreneurship and digital startups. It aims to produce an annual European Digital City Index to allow stakeholders to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the startup ecosystems in different cities, as well as the cities’ digital readiness. The Index is to built upon and expand the 22 action points of the Startup Manifesto.
Specific Objective 3: Spreading the best practices of policies stimulating web entrepreneurship by creating the best practices repository. This objective stems from the Startup Manifesto (action 21) that reads, “to provide a resource where local and national governments can share the best ‘hacks’ they found to achieve immediate impact.” EDFx aims to collect and analyse examples of policy initiatives across the globe aimed at facilitating web/tech entrepreneurship and supporting better innovation ecosystems.
Specific Objective 4: Building and maintaining a vibrant network of leading-edge thinkers, inspirational entrepreneurs, digital startups, thought leaders, captains of industry, policymakers and other stakeholders. The diversity of this community and high professionalism of its members is its key assets, enabling cross-fertilisation of expertise and designing new solutions and models to drive Europe’s digital economy forward.
Specific Objective 5: An active and professional dissemination and communication campaign will help inform a wide array of stakeholders, including web entrepreneurs, policymakers and other interested and relevant parties.
Specific Objective 6: EDFx is to be constructively and pro-actively involved in policy dialogue, contributing its expertise in on-going discussions. It provides policy support and monitoring in the field of web/tech entrepreneurs and elevates the voice of tech entrepreneurs in policy debates. This has the potential to inform a wider group of people, but it also has the likely effect of initiating a healthy competition between EU member states to improve their relative ranking. In addition, EDFx is constructively and pro-actively involved in policy dialogue, contributing its expertise in on-going discussions.
