Gains Without Frontiers - Microsoft's Unlimited Potential in Central and Eastern Europe

Microsoft made major commitments to Central and Eastern Europe last year as part of its Unlimited Potential programme — with the aim of helping the region to realise its full potential in the fast-growing knowledge economy. A year—and a period of global economic turmoil —later, Microsoft has renewed these commitments with an investment of over $200 million over the next three years. Vahe Torossian, President Microsoft Central and Eastern Europe, looks at a year of progress and explores the region’s boundless opportunities.

On an October day in 2007, I joined with representatives from governments, independent analysts, and non-governmental organisations in Budapest. We had gathered to discuss how Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential initiative would — by transforming education, fostering local innovation and enabling jobs and opportunity — help to ensure that Central and Eastern Europe’s governments, economies and citizens were best placed to fully enjoy the benefits of the knowledge economy.

Our announcements were important then, but in a deeply troubled global economy, are even more so today. Microsoft showcased a raft of partnership initiatives in Budapest, recognising the unique factors in play in the countries that comprise Central and Eastern Europe. But Unlimited Potential also relies on the many things that these countries have in common: a near 100 per cent literate workforce; huge intellectual resources in a thriving student population; inherent business acumen; and economies that drive the fastest growing region on earth. Microsoft’s three-year, $200 million Unlimited Potential investment aims to ensure that impressive growth and rapid adoption of the latest ICT remain key regional differentiators for many years to come.

Education is the foundation of innovation

In today’s knowledge economy, knowledge itself is the product, rather than a tool. Knowledge is now a critical competitive differentiator and the skills of workforces ever-more important. Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential is helping Central and Eastern Europe’s governments to build educational systems that can provide the next generation of innovative workers — individuals who are perfectly placed to enjoy the economic and social advantages of ICT.

Microsoft’s Partners in Learning (PiL) initiative focuses on education and continues to bear fruit in Central and Eastern Europe. Microsoft reached more than 44,000 students, teachers, and education policymakers throughout Central and Eastern Europe last year alone which adds to the more than 5.5 million reached through Partners in Learning programmes since it launched in the region in 2004. The examples below give a taste of PiL’s local impact throughout the year:

•	Microsoft worked with the Greek Ministry of Education to create an online portal community for teachers to access resources, share good practice and participate in a regional community share ideas. Currently half of the country’s teachers are portal participants.
•	In Hungary Microsoft received an award from the John von Neumann Computer Society, the largest Hungarian NGO responsible for digital literacy. The award specifically recognized the more than 10,000 teachers trained through Microsoft Hungry and the dozens of books, materials, centers and competitions geared specifically to educating students and teachers.

Microsoft’s school-based IT Academies foster and grow IT economies by offering a world class Microsoft curriculum that will educate students about vital technologies and give them real world skills. In addition, IT Academies support employers and the wider community by helping to create a highly trained IT workforce. As well as access to a comprehensive curriculum, they provide textbooks, online learning resources, faculty training and assistance with job and internship opportunities. Since last October, the number of IT Academies across Central and Eastern Europe has grown from 341 to 456.

Lifelong learning

Ensuring the skills of the next generation of innovation professionals is vital, but Microsoft also understands that there are significant numbers of people who have already passed through the formal education system but who are still underserved by ICT. This might be for a variety of reasons —because skills in old industries are now redundant, because disability has precluded access to regular employment, because they live in remote areas or because they have retired from the job market. This covers a multitude of individuals from a host of different backgrounds, but they all have one thing in common — a need to access ICT and the skills to use it effectively.

In the last year Microsoft has provided Central and Eastern Europe with $17 million in cash grants, software, and specialised curriculum through contributions to NGOs. A large part of these contributions are part of our Community Technology Skills Programme (CTSP), which promotes workforce development and IT skills training programmes in underserved communities.

Microsoft, for example, is working with not for profit organisation ‘Project Harmony’ to build a network of Information Dissemination and Equal Access (IDEA) Centres in Russia. We provide curriculum material, training resources and cash grants to the project, helping many socially disadvantaged groups to access modern technologies. Since October last year, 17 new centres from 15 cities have joined IDEA network, bringing the total to 59 across 41 Russian regions. Approximately nine out of ten participants believe that their new skills will help them to find a job or get a promotion. The need for IDEA Centres is no more clearly illustrated than through their popularity: more than 13,000 people have been trained in 1,467 Unlimited Potential courses and an astounding 500,000 have taken advantage of their services. This project is also underway in Ukraine, helped by a $190,000 Microsoft Unlimited Potential grant.

CTSP is bringing opportunity across the region, in projects large and small:

•	Microsoft has partnered with Polish NGO ‘Foundation Supporting Physically Disabled Mathematicians and Computer Specialists’ to help people across 404 municipalities acquire the IT skills they need to overcome the geographical, architectural and organisational barriers that keep them from work.
•	In Greece, Microsoft Unlimited Potential has partnered with NGO HEPIS and the City of Athens to bring ICT skills to immigrant populations, helping them to benefit from and contribute to their new community.
•	Last year Microsoft began working with Hungarian NGOs on the 21st Century Skills for Employability initiative, which aims to bring digital literacy to 1 million people in five years.
•	Latvian NGO LIKTA is working with Microsoft on the Latvia@World initiative, bringing ICT skills to the disadvantaged. In 2007, LIKTA introduced a series of trainings targeting newly formed small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to facilitate entrepreneurship while also offering consultations to those with disabilities, elderly people and others who need to access ICT skills.
•	In Bulgaria, government, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Microsoft are working to bring ICT to traditionally underserved communities through a network of iCentres. Unlimited Potential has helped in delivering localised Bulgarian content, the latest ICT curriculum, over 400 trained instructors and a lifelong e-learning account. The aim is to bring the benefits of ICT to 450,000 Bulgarians between 2007 and 2009.

The list goes on, and the numbers are impressive, but the power of all these initiatives is at the individual level, where people are able to find new jobs, enjoy increased prosperity and re-connect with society.

Encouraging innovative economies

As the Central and Eastern European workforce acquires the skills that will fuel prosperity in the knowledge economy, Microsoft is also helping to ensure that innovative businesses are nurtured and can grow.

Microsoft has developed a network of Microsoft Innovation Centres (MICs). Formed of local partnerships, they provide students, IT professionals and developers with access to world-class consultants, facilities and resources. There are already 18 MICs, with Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Russia and Slovenia part of a growing innovation network. In February 2008, Microsoft opened the first MIC in the Czech Republic, in the south eastern city of Brno. The MIC is a close collaboration with the South Moravian Innovation Centre, which is itself a partnership body between the City of Brno, Masaryk University and Brno University of Technology. The MIC’s aim is to help incubate fledgling Czech IT companies and foster innovative ideas and enterprises. It is currently working with webProgress, a new company that is taking forward an idea originally entered in Microsoft’s student innovation competition, the Imagine Cup.

Which brings me to Microsoft’s Imagine Cup itself, a global innovation competition inspiring students to change the world through software — and acting as an invaluable springboard for careers and business ideas. Students from our region excel, year after year; in the 2008 Ukraine claimed first place in the Algorithm category while Slovakian and Hungarian teams finished second and third respectively in the flagship software design category. Imagine Cup 2008 was a very good year, with Central and Eastern European students winning 13 awards in the competition’s nine categories and five Achievement Awards.

Where next?

Central and Eastern Europe will need to be flexible and agile if it is to remain competitive in troubled times — attributes that are closely associated with innovative economies. Today’s volatile financial markets accentuate the importance of Microsoft Unlimited Potential in the region, rather than diminish it.

In the next year we will continue to work with partners to shape our products and solutions to meeting the specific needs of the region — and maintain innovative momentum under difficult conditions. A core focus will be on tackling three fundamental requirements that will ultimately decide if Central and Eastern Europe’s citizens can harness the power of the knowledge economy — affordability, relevance and access. Microsoft has delivered a range of products, including Windows Starter Edition (software specifically designed to work on entry-level computers and aimed at the first time user), Secondary PC (affordable refurbished PCs with genuine Microsoft products installed) and Windows and Office education tools (affordable software for government education systems). All aim to bring the power of ICT within reach of many millions more citizens, giving them the tools they need to increase economic opportunity.

A good example of Microsoft Unlimited Potential’s efforts to address, head on, the three fundamental requirements of participation in the knowledge economy is the success of our Subscription Computing Programme. Through this initiative we have partnered with over 20 local companies in nine Central and Eastern European countries to help increase PC ownership among underserved populations. After making a small down payment and agreeing to subscribe over a fixed period, customers receive a computer with internet access and a tailored software package. At the end of the contract, the consumer owns the PC. With more than 117,000 units sold, it is proving to be a key route to PC ownership and the chance to share in the benefits of the knowledge economy.

Microsoft’s is also working with Romanian software developers, education partners and retailers as part of its Family Education PC project. The initiative, known as PC@Home, helps families to acquire a computer loaded with relevant, localised content. The PC gives children the opportunity to learn, with access to 200 interactive lessons in 10 subjects, representing 2,000 hours of training. This covers 30 per cent of the Romanian national curriculum. Additionally, other family members are able to learn IT skills alongside their children, ensuring that all age groups can harness the economic and social benefits of IT.

On that October day a year ago in Budapest, we outlined a bold and brave framework for Unlimited Potential — but there is always a danger that brave words may fail to translate into action. Twelve months later, I’m proud to see that our concept — unleashing potential through the power of software — provides opportunity for Microsoft and opportunity for the region’s education systems, economies and citizens. It is this synergy, and the renewed $200 million Microsoft commitment, which has ensured that the words we spoke in Hungary continue to be matched by deeds across Central and Eastern Europe.