Student Company “Click Events” from Belgium wins the Microsoft Innovation Award

“Click events offer an innovative integrated service which is unique and simple. We know that our customers are busy and we want to offer them the possibility to organise their event whenever they need and wherever they want,” said Nicolas Sacre, from Click Events.

“We were impressed by these young people’s grasp of the potential for multimedia in business. They integrated internet, telecommunication and a high level personalised service in a scalable concept,” said Jan Muehlfeit, Chairman Europe Microsoft Corporation.

Microsoft recognises the work of JA-YE and is committed to realising the potential of entrepreneurs and small companies to generate big ideas and help drive the innovation of tomorrow. With this in mind, we are working in partnership to support the next generation with the practical tools and technical skills set to further their potential.

57 young entrepreneurs representing 15 student companies from across Europe participated in the JA-YE Europe Enterprise Challenge 2008. The event took place in the European Parliament and was hosted by Mr Daniel Daianu and Ms Ramona Manescu, Members of the European Parliament. These are students aged 19 and over who are running a company as part of their higher education (college or university), under the mentoring of their professors and business volunteers. These young people are developing companies that offer real products and/or services and are dealing with the everyday problems of starting up. There are 25,000 students in the JA-YE Graduate Programme for Entrepreneurship in Europe this year and statistics show that more than 29% of these graduates will go on to succeed as fully-fledged entrepreneurs which is equivalent to approximately 7,250 enterprises.