Lithuanians in the News
26th June 2011
Lithuanian IT Entrepreneur a World Leader
Ilja Laurs. Photo courtesy lrytas.lt
Lithuanians continue to make their mark in the IT world. The European Manager of the Year Award for 2011 went to the Lithuanian IT entreprneur Ilja Laurs. The award was made by the European Business Press (EBP) at its General Assembly in Athens on June 9, 2011. The EBP organisation represents 52 top European business publications in 27 countries. The "Financial Times", "The Wall Street Journal Europe" and other leading European business newspapers and journals belong to EBP.
Ilja Laurs is the CEO of GetJar, a company founded in Lithuania in 2005, which has now become a world leader in delivering applications to mobile phones. The EBP Award recognised Laurs’ leadership, sucessfully competing in a field with IT giants such as Nokia, Apple, Google and Microsoft. Previous winners of the award have been eminent business leaders, such as Jorma Ollila of Nokia, Ingvar Kamprad of Ikea, Bernd Pischetsrieder of BMW and Volkswagen and other distinguished peronages.
This is not the first international award to Laurs. In 2011 GetJar was named as a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. Time Magazine named GetJar as one of "10 start-ups that will change your life" and in 2009 Laurs was listed among the “Top 40 most influential people in mobile communications” by Informa Telecoms & Media (IT&M).

Further information:
On this website - News archive/ Lithuanians in the News/ 13th September 2009 - Lithuanian Entrepreneur a World Leader in Mobile Communications www.lrytas.lt 10 & 11/06/11
http://pr.euractiv.com/press-release/ilja-laurs-european-manager-year-2011-european-business-press-voted-ceo-getjar-17259