Skills Innovation Facility

Skills systems are confronted by the need to respond to increasingly dynamic and fluid labour market and societal conditions. Climate change, technology, demographic shifts, migration and globalization are causing increasing disruption to the world of work, while making skills development increasingly complex, fluid and unpredictable. Addressing contemporary skills challenges requires more dynamic and integrated skills and lifelong learning ecosystems.

Recognizing the importance of innovation for the renewed calls for lifelong learning, the ILO has initiated a Skills Innovation Facility. The Facility identifies and tests promising and innovative ideas and solutions that address the major skills challenges of today and of tomorrow.

Why the ILO?
“Investing in people’s capabilities” is one of the key recommendations of the Global Commission on the Future of Work. The ILO Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work calls for action from ILO constituents to promote effective lifelong learning systems and quality education for all. Taken together, these calls for action provide the ILO with a unique opportunity to support Member States to develop and implement, through the process of social dialogue, education, training and lifelong learning, policies and programmes that promote people’s employability throughout their lives.

Our goals

• To engage with constituents in all regions on key skills issues;
• To provide the technical and financial assistance to partners to facilitate innovation in skills systems;
• To support the development, piloting and replication of successful and innovative solutions to major skills challenges; and
• To create a global collaborative network of innovators that work together to solve the most pressing skills issues.

Our approach

Our 5-stage approach to innovation focuses on identifying most pressing challenges on skills development, sourcing new ideas and potential solutions, providing technical support and guidance to develop and test prototypes, and facilitating knowledge sharing and access to a global network of skills innovators.

IDENTIFY a challenge
CALL for ideas and solutions
PROTOTYPE the winning solution
TEST prototype on the ground
BUILD A NETWORK of innovators

The process

We support innovation by identifying the most pressing challenges in skills development, sourcing new ideas and potential solutions, providing technical support and guidance to develop and test prototypes, and facilitating knowledge sharing and access to a global network of skills innovators. These five stages are shown in the figure below.

Our initiatives

The Skills Innovation Facility implements three interlinked initiatives:

• Skills Challenge Innovation Call

Inviting partners to propose new and practical ideas and solutions to key challenges.

The Skills Challenge Call recognises that individuals and organizations are best placed to drive innovation in skill systems and address pressing skills challenges. The Skills Challenge Innovation Call will invite partners to propose new and practical ideas and solutions that have the potential for scaling-up and replication on a wider scale.

• Skills Innovation Lab

Convening key stakeholders to design and test prototype solutions to difficult skills challenges.

The Skills Innovation Lab is a six-month program through which the winning proposal from the Challenge Call, receives technical support and guidance from ILO Skills Specialists and partner innovation experts to develop their ideas into prototypes ready for implementation.

• Skills Innovation Network

Building a network of innovators to share ideas, experiences and collaborate to develop and scale innovations for identified skills challenges.

The Skills Innovation Network connects innovators, ILO constituents, TVET institutions, academia and development practitioners to share ideas, experiences and collaborate to develop and scale innovations for identified skills challenges. By building on the existing ILO Skills for Employment Knowledge Sharing Platform, it will provide access to tools, resources and knowledge-sharing events that members can use to build ongoing solutions to the problems they face.