Last month I had the pleasure of heading to Tallinn, Estonia to attend Gen-E 2022 , Europe’s largest entrepreneurship event. Organized by JA-Europe, one of Avanade’s Corporate Citizenship partners, the event is a celebration of the entrepreneurship and achievements of European students. Hundreds of young entrepreneurs came together to showcase their cutting-edge business ideas and compete for the titles of Best Company and Best Start-Up of the year.

Avanade served as the European & Technology partner for the event, sponsoring the Avanade Digital Innovation Award . The winner of this award receives € 1,000, mentorship for a year, as well as meeting with some of Avanade Europe’s executive team.  

This was my first time attending the event, and the first thing I noticed was the energy and passion from all the participants. These young entrepreneurs had incredible ideas; it was difficult to choose just one winner for the Avanade Digital Innovation Award.  

When it came to selecting the winner, it was a close call. Our focus was of course on digital innovation, but we also based our decision on a variety of other criteria including business case, use of technology, and a good, passionate presentation.  

In the end, we selected a team named Sign Text , made up of three students from Romania – Maria Ghencioiu, Cătălin Feticu and Andrei Ștefan. Sign Text created an application that supports hearing impaired individuals. The app leverages AI technologies to translate sign language gestures into text and audio for digital platforms such as Microsoft Teams and WhatsApp.

 

Why did we select this team? In addition to having a strong business case and presentation, they are using technology to break down barriers when it comes to digital communication. At Avanade, our purpose is to make a genuine human impact, so Sign Text’s use of technology and focus on inclusion really hit home for us.   This was an incredible event hosted by our partner JA-Europe, and I look forward to seeing what comes next for Sign Text and all the other inspiring teams who participated in Gen-E 2022.