The renewed Lisbon strategy stresses the need for Europe to place more emphasis on anticipating skill needs. Globalisation, technological change and demographic developments (including ageing and migration) pose huge challenges in that respect, comprising both risks and opportunities. At the same time, a lack of information on future skill needs has been a long-standing concern in Europe. With specific targets set in the Lisbon strategy, the need for regular forward-looking assessments has gained momentum. Subsequently, this resulted in the recent New Skills for New Jobs initiative by the European Commission, and related European projects aimed at identifying future job and skills needs using quantitative modelling approaches. While having advantages of robustness, stakeholders as well as the European Commission identified a clear need for complementary, more qualitative forward-looking analysis. Consequently, the European Commission (DG EMPL) earlier this year commissioned a series of 17 future-oriented sector studies (Horizon 2020) on innovation, skills and jobs following a qualitative methodology. The final results of these studies will become available in spring 2009, and will be followed by a number of other initiatives over the year to come and beyond.
Posts Tagged ‘chemicals’
EFP Brief No. 160: Future Jobs and Skills in the EU
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011EFP Brief No. 143: Teagasc 2030: Reinventing the Irish Agri-Food Knowledge System
Sunday, May 22nd, 2011Teagasc means ‘teaching’ or ‘instruction’ in Gaelic. It is the name of the food and agricultural research, education and advisory body in Ireland. By 2006, fundamental changes happening to the Common Agricultural Policy in Europe were already being felt throughout the Irish agri-food sector. New and emerging issues were gaining importance and looked likely to have an impact on the sector. It was necessary to ask how Teagasc could maintain its relevance to clients and stakeholders as it moved ahead. The study builds upon previous foresight exercises and long-term strategic studies undertaken in Ireland and the EU.
EFP Brief No. 137: The Future of Manufacturing in Europe A Survey of the Literature and a Modelling Approach
Saturday, May 21st, 2011Manufacturing in Europe is facing challenges that may impact on its performance in the near future: the emergence of international competitors, new technologies allowing the emergence of new business models, increased off-shore and relocated activities. The aim of this study was to provide policy-makers with a long-term vision of European manufacturing, its characteristics, its place in the EU economy, in the world and the main challenges it will be facing. Its purpose was to identify, on the basis of current demographic, environmental, technological, economic and social trends, and possible scenarios, the likely bottlenecks, unsustainable trends and major challenges that European manufacturing will have to face over the coming 30 years. From this, implications for various microeconomic policies, notably for industrial policy, were explored, contributing to the mid-term review of industrial policy in 2007 by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry.
EFP Brief No. 134: Future Challenge for Europe: Providing Security and Safety to Citizens
Saturday, May 21st, 2011As stated in the recent EC Communication on ‘Reforming the budget, changing Europe’ (SEC (2007) 1188), the European Union has a key role to play in ‘providing security and safety to citizens’. Especially in the aftermath of 11th Sept. 2001 security related issues are becoming an increasingly important facet of global society and have an increasing impact on economy and science. The issues are manifold and include protecting citizens and state from organized crime, preventing terrorist acts, and responding to natural and manmade disasters. Civil security issues are becoming more and more important to governments and national economies across the globe, and the EU is no exception. The EC sees security research as an important policy objective, which started in 2001 with a Preparatory Action on Security Research (PASR) and is now the tenth theme of the FP7 Cooperation programme. Security and safety technologies are seen to have applications in many sectors including transport, civil protection, energy, environment, health and financial systems.
EFP Brief No. 91: Government and Corporate Social Responsibility 2020
Friday, May 20th, 2011While corporate social responsibility is increasingly requested in order to respond to current environmental challenges and threats to public health, the ISIS group of the Commissariat Général du Plan of the French Government (“The Plan”) analyses trends in corporate behaviour as well as regulatory principles underlying sustainable development and corporate social responsibility. Beyond this, the ISIS group explores future issues in different sectors in order to illustrate existing junctions and differences. Based on this prospective analysis, ISIS built four strategic scenarios for state intervention to make an inventory of tools to urge enterprises encompassing social and environmental issues in their schemes for economic development.
EFMN Brief No. 91 – Government and Corporate Social Responsibility 2020
EFP Brief No. 77: Technology for Industry Foresight – Kocaeli 2012
Friday, May 20th, 2011Kocaeli is one of the leading industrial cities in Turkey. Technology Foresight exercise for industry in Kocaeli aimed at shaping the future of the region through university-industry collaboration by anticipating changes, developments and advancements in manufacturing technologies and increasing the effectiveness and competitiveness of the industry in the region.
EFMN Brief No. 77 – Technology for Industry Foresight – Kocaeli 2012
EFP Brief No. 63: South African Benchmark 2020
Friday, May 20th, 2011The overall goal of this foresight study is the identification of global technological trends, which will influence the competitiveness and future development of South African industries over the next 15 years. The study specifically focuses on innovation areas that hold the potential to reduce industrial dependency on foreign technology. Broad-based recommendations are formulated, intending to support the formulation of policies, strategies and programmes aimed at growing South Africa’s technology and innovation base.
EFP Brief No. 54: Spanish Nuclear Energy Futures 2030
Tuesday, May 10th, 2011The purpose of this exercise was to identify the main technologies that would influence the development of nuclear energy in Spain up until 2030. The picked up information is supposed to help to change the public opinion in Spain from a sceptic view towards a broader acceptance of the application of nuclear energy.
EFMN Brief No. 53 – European Manufacturing Visions ManVis 2020
EFP Brief No. 39: Turkish S+T Vision 2023
Friday, May 6th, 2011‘Vision 2023: Strategies for Science and Technology’ is a national project aimed at providing Turkish stakeholders with a vision for the development of science and technology vision in Turkey over a period of 20 years. It involved comprises four strands: Technology Foresight, Technological Capacity, R+D Manpower and R+D Infrastructure. The Technology Foresight strand provided the backbone of the Vision 2023 project. The remaining three programmes supporting the Foresight strand by collecting data on the existing science, technology and innovation capacity, hard data on R+D manpower as well as R+D infrastructure, as well as an inventory of national technology assets and an overview of the institutional and legal framework for research prevailing at this time.
