High Skills ECOSYSTEMS

worldwide distribution


"There is an opportunity for the VET sector to be a contributor to the innovation system through an applied research agenda.

In this context, applied research refers to research with a focus on solving real-world problems"

(Beddie & Simon, 2017)

Co-Creating and fostering local Skills ecosystems - bringing together...

The Skillman.eu model for Skills Anticipation

The skills anticipation lifecycle that skillman.eu adopts, incorporates as one of its key components for the identification of skills needs, the ILO skills anticipation system and it's also ispired by the five methodological guides to anticipating and matching skills and jobs, published in 2016 by Cedefop in collaboration with the ILO and ETF.

In one side, the skillman.eu Alliance produces researches that are accomplished via its research centres, though existing international networks, as well as in cooperation with and support of the extensive network of the numerous complementary organizations who have joined the skillman.eu Alliance.

In the other side the Observatory aims to actively interconnect and coordinate all the actions and results with the existing EU tools and initiatives for skills development and aims to source a large debate among stakeholders.

This process wants make tangible results such as:

· total engagement of the audience and conversion of valuable stakeholders in assets for the future sustainability as they become skillman.eu open network members

· valorisation of the skillman.eu results that are fully distributed and implemented by the industries and VET providers belonging to the engaged stakeholders

· final beneficiaries involvement, because in this process, also the learners are fully engage with various dissemination campaigns, piloting, mobility and finally personal experiences that make them more aware and attracted by the sector working opportunities.


Within this approach, each stakeholder become engaged at the moment that acquires the consciousness that the updating of the existing curricula and the learning pathways is not a one time problem. The stakeholder become engaged when decide to join the skillman.eu community realising that the need to forecast the skills is a continuous necessity and:

· It’s not just a one time problem for the company, that needs to follow rapid market changes and to continuously update his personnel

· It’s just a one time problem for the VET providers that have to respond to the needs of work giving competences for the future and for life

· It’s not just a one time problem for the learners, in a certain time of their life, because they need to plan their pathways in a lifelong learning perspective.

The researches and the stakeholders interactions are deployed within a Labour Market and Skills Intelligence European panorama that is represented by the chart.

The skillman.eu Observatory provides the desk researches and organises a collaborative work with key stakeholders involved in focus group sessions, running with them a capacity building activity to design and anticipate the demand for skills in three perspectives:

· the short-term

· the mid-term and

· the long-term.

The Observatory identify and involve various external participants to the foresight process and pursues a very relevant dialogue among them which, in response to change, have to sit at the same table and to translate the strategic dialogue into an enhanced cooperation. The result of this interaction that skillman.eu manages among the key stakeholders is also a capacity building effect that represents an additional invaluable asset in itself.

The stakeholders are actively involved to implement the STF exercises which are organised in the three canonical ILO – SKOLKOVO’s blocks:

· designing the ‘map of the future’

· transforming the map into a set of requirements

· identifying specific practical recommendations