At the recent INNOVEIT event in Brussels, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology launched its Deep Tech Talent Initiative, which aims to provide a million people across the EU with the skills required to function in the deep tech sector in the coming years. This sector is characterized by technology that is based on tangible engineering innovation or scientific advances and discoveries.
“Fostering, attracting, and retaining deep tech talents is crucial to enable the green and digital transitions and harness a new wave of innovation in line with the New European Innovation Agenda,” said Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth at the launch.
This focus on advanced skills is not especially new. Indeed, the EU has a so-called Digital Decade initiative, which aims to “empower businesses and people in a human-centered, sustainable and more prosperous future.”
The initiative, which was launched in 2021 has ambitious goals spread across four axes, the last of which concerns the growth in digital skills. There is much within this that makes sense. After all, scarcely a day goes by when industry doesn’t bemoan the shortage of developers, cybersecurity experts, data scientists, and so on. In what Ursula von der Leyen hopes is the “European Year of Skills”, it surely makes sense to focus attention on these cutting-edge skills that will drive the competitiveness and productivity of Europe, right?
Yes and no. For while those skills are undoubtedly necessary and needed, there are also somewhat more rudimentary improvements that could be made that could have an equally substantial impact. Indeed, economic modelling from Centre for Economics and Business Research argues that improving quite basic digital skills could not only help 1.7 million people find jobs each year but also add around £45.3 billion to the UK economy.