In the words of SAP CEO Bill Mc Dermott, “Few companies can lay claim to being the originator of an entire industry. SAP is one of the exceptions.”
Forty-five years ago, the founders of SAP set off to start an ERP company, armed with an untainted sense of courage and a lot of entrepreneurial passion. Since then, Hasso Plattner and the company’s founders have inspired countless young professionals to boldly pursue their academic, business, and technology passions and build something new.
To ensure that the legacy is alive and well within SAP, Hasso Plattner and the SAP Executive Board conceived the Hasso Plattner Founders’ Award in 2014. Granted annually by the CEO to a deserving employee or team, the award has become the highest internal recognition possible at SAP. The award now needs a deserving candidate for 2017. The winner will receive a crystal glass lens trophy, a grand of prize a €100,000 in cash and equity, in addition to other ways of recognition.
To ensure that its entrepreneurial legacy is alive and well, SAP conceived the Hasso Plattner Founders’ Award
Last year, 190 teams were nominated by their peers with a total of 1,700 employees from 38 countries, marking a significant increase over previous years.
The SAP Skills for Africa team stood out from the crowd and was selected as the winner of the 2016 award.
The four employees from the winning team launched and grew a jobs creation program that fills Africa’s skills gap in the IT sector. More than 400 consultants have now been placed in jobs in Kenya, Morocco, and South Africa, and the project is currently expanding to the Ivory Coast and Algeria.
SAP Africa CEO Brett Parker praised the team for their hard work, saying: “It’s clearly been worth the effort, because in 2016 we had a positive impact on 1,000 lives.”
At SAP, we recognize that an innovation-led culture with an abundance of entrepreneurial thinking is the key to future success and to improving people lives.
The award seeks to reward employees who took a risk, charged ahead with their new ideas, and showed a new vision for the future — just like the SAP founders did. We eagerly await the winner of the Hasso Plattner Founder Award 2017.