The aim of this project is to provide a comprehensive picture of the main trends ahead and possible disruptive global chal-lenges in the future and to examine how the EU could position itself to take an active role in shaping a response to them. The work described in the final report contributes a fresh perspective on the future, linking widely accepted quantified trends through 2025 and beyond with the opinions of experts and policy makers on the likely consequences of these trends and wild cards. This work has been undertaken in cooperation with the Bureau of European Policy Advisors of the European Commission.
Posts Tagged ‘education’
EFP Brief No. 179: Facing the Future: Time for the EU to Meet Global Challenges
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011EFP Brief No. 171: Research Priorities for Digital Creative Industries in Europe
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011With creativity and strategy, the CReATE project designed and implemented a novel strategic cluster development approach integrating Strategic Policy Intelligence tools (such as foresight and impact assessment) and direct innovation support instruments. Guided by a trans-regional framework and based on very different regional strengths and research, technology development and innovation (RTDI) support histories, it aimed at fostering cross-cluster and transregional learning and knowledge exchange more effectively and successfully. In an iterative process, alternating between and mutually enriching the regional and the trans-regional levels, research priorities for information and communication technology innovations in “Culture and Creative Industries” were identified. Strongly related to their “fields of excellence & fields of aspiration” (the existing strengths but also the future development trajectories set by the regional stakeholders), the strategic capabilities of the different stakeholder groups were strengthened and a strategic joint research agenda was developed. On this base, broader and more far-reaching activities will be developed regionally and trans-regionally, also involving partners from outside the consortium and optimising regional, national and EU programmes from RTDI and other policy fields.
EFP Brief No. 160: Future Jobs and Skills in the EU
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011The 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.
EFP Brief No. 154: Looking Forward in the ICT and Media Industry – Technological and Market Developments
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011The project was an activity within the framework contract between the European Parliament and ETAG, the European Technology Assessment Group, to carry out TA studies on behalf of the Parliament’s STOA Panel in view of the growing importance of a European science and technology policy. The purpose of this particular project was to identify current and expected technological and market developments in the field of ICT with an impact on the media industry and to indicate regulatory challenges and requirements stemming from the anticipated changes. The main target group are the Members of the European Parliament; the wider addressee is the interested public.
EFP Brief No. 150: Strategic Capacity Building in Clusters to Enhance Future-oriented Open Innovation Processes
Sunday, May 22nd, 2011For the purpose of increasing and sustaining business and regional long-term competitiveness, information and training modules were developed to enrich cluster development policies with tools that give incentives for and facilitate ‘outward-looking’ (open innovation) and forward-looking (foresight, technology assessment) activities and thus provide strategic guidance for developing future-proof, open innovation processes. After testing the tools in ICT, mechatronics and life sciences clusters, they are now being applied in a trans-regional foresight approach to develop a joint research agenda for clusters in the economically more and more important creative industries.
EFP Brief No. 146: Germany 2020 New Challenges for a Land on Expedition
Sunday, May 22nd, 2011The brief provides a short overview of a project in which Deutsche Bank Research has combined its own foresight expertise with inputs from the bank’s business strategists and external experts in order to develop scenarios for the future development of the German economy and society against the backdrop of intensifying structural change.
EFP Brief No. 145: Constructing Dark Scenarios for Privacy Policy Formulation
Sunday, May 22nd, 2011In the last few decades, scenarios have provided a way of analysing the implications of alternative futures, especially as they might be impacted by new technologies. This has been no less true of ambient intelligence (AmI), which may be embedded everywhere in the not so distant future. Most of the scenarios developed by AmI enthusiasts have been rather “sunny”, showing how new technologies promise to make our lives more productive and enriching. A European project called SWAMI (Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence) deliberately developed “dark scenarios” to highlight the threats to privacy, identity, trust and security and inclusiveness posed by new technologies. This brief describes the SWAMI scenarios and the methodology used to construct and analyse them.
