A pilot ‘PES EU Innovation Lab’ launching in 2020
The PES Network is ready to take up the next level of cooperation, developing new ideas and solutions together with partners in a PES EU Innovation Lab. Inspired by successful examples in France and Flanders, an EU-wide PES innovation lab is being launched.
The PES Network’s Innovation Lab expects to foster innovation and test new approaches to untackled challenges by bringing together partners, jobseekers and external stakeholders to find creative solutions in an open process.
By building upon a wide repertoire of PES experiences from across the EU and facilitating cross-border co-creation, the lab aims to address complex challenges – such as skill shortages – that affect the EU as a whole.
In the long run, the lab is expected to contribute to an eco-system of innovation in and around our labour markets which will help to tackle challenges related to the future of work.
To achieve these ambitious aims, the lab will have to develop a safe environment to experiment with new ideas while accepting the inherent risks and the possibility of failure.
The EU PES Lab will be established in a pilot phase in early 2020, during which individual PES can propose projects and ideas.
If your PES is facing a particular challenge for which you would like to find and test innovative solutions together with peer PES in other Member States, please contact the PES secretariat at EMPL-PES-SECRETARIAT@ec.europa.eu.
Other PES will then be called to join the initiatives, and the results will be shared within the PES Network. Subscribe to the PES Network newsletter to stay informed!
The pilot phase will be evaluated by the end of 2021, when a final decision will be made on the eventual set-up of a fully-fledged PES EU Innovation Lab.
The pilot PES EU Innovation Lab follows the recommendation of a ‘PES Network Working Group’ that was formed in 2019 with the specific task of investigating the possibility and added value of creating an EU-wide innovation lab.
The outcome of the Working Group, a concept paper for building up a PES EU Innovation Lab, will be published shortly on the Knowledge Centre.
For further information on existing national PES labs, please consult the documents related below.