Skills for Smart Industrial Specialisation and Digital Transformation
"The Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME) has launched a two-year project aimed at developing a common vision and supporting actions on skills for smart industrial specialisation, digital transformation and high-tech T-shaped skills, including a Toolbox for policy makers in Europe." ... "The competitiveness of EU industry, building on its innovativeness and productivity, is highly dependent on the knowledge, skills, competencies and creativity of its workforce. Potential gaps in skills development combined with mismatches between labour supply and demand directly harm job creation, something widely recognised by industry. The Fourth Industrial revolution implies major disruption to the scale in which upskilling and reskilling efforts currently take place, and is therefore likely to widen these potential gaps. Moreover, it is likely that places characterised by large consumer markets, such as the EU, could be confronted with the highest skills mismatches." (Source 1).
As part of this expert group Peter Pawlowsky discusses, validates and refines the current findings that are presented in a state-of-play analysis by PWC.
(Source 1: Skills for Smart Industrial Skills Specialisation and Digital Working Document – State of Play Analysis on T-Shaped Skills 16 March 2018; European Commission, Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME), Department A – COSME, H2020 SMEs and EMFF, Unit A1 – COSME)
In the first Meeting that was held on April 24th in Bruxelles emphasis was on the process of Digital Transformation. This process occurs on three dimensions (1) People and skills (2) Culture and Organisation and (3) Technology and infrastructure. It was outlined by Laurent Probst (PWC) that the key trend of digital transformation involves data driven decision making and customer centricity, transition in employment patterns from life Long employee at one company to working at multiple companies and a trend towards collaborative work across disciplines.
The second "Digital Transformation Skills" meeting took place on the 19th of June 2018 in Bruxelles. Focus of the second meeting was on the EU Vision on High-Tech Skills for the Future. Presentation and discussion covered corporate champions in developing skills for the future, centers for key enabling technologies, smart education champions and examples of cities & regions that foster future skills. These experiences are to be boiled down into a EU 2030 High Tech Skills Vision Toolbox. (Foto: Bastian Vomhof)
During the fourth workshop on 12th December 2018 in Bruxelles two specific moduls of the toolbox were discussed: (1) Skills Strategy and (2) Leadership and Governence. Stakeholders from different Levels - individual - Company - City - regional and national, as well as EU level presented their skills strategies and definied leadership and governance structures for implementing skills strategies. (Foto: Bertrand Pedersen) )