Abstract

In the EU Green Deal (2019) is written “Achieving a circular economy requires a full mobilization of industry. It takes 25 years – a generation – to transform value chains. To be ready in 2050, actions need to be taken now.” Likewise, the digital and green economy sectors offer great potential for new activities and jobs to achieve Green Deal goals. Proactive re-skilling and up-skilling are necessary to reap the benefits of this transition.

It is, therefore, evident that there are clear need to improve the competencies and skills of youth and working population in the digital and green economy sectors. Sustainable and digital processes are becoming more complex, and companies and entrepreneurship activities require coping with many different issues, which were not learnt at school, e.g., switching from linear to circular business models. Specifically, Green skills have to be functional and set in the context of the real world. While digital skills are generally well understood, there is no accepted definition of green skills. Generic skills such as autonomy and communication skills are critical as well as generic green skills in such areas as waste reduction, energy, and resource efficiency. There are new occupations emerging, such as builders working with sustainable materials and methods. Specialized green skills can transform existing occupations but in most cases, they need to top up existing profiles. Automation and digitalization affect all jobs. They bring fast change to our labour markets, integrating them with international markets and global value chains. They bring new opportunities but also affect existing businesses.

The focus on skills and education is important for a successful green and digital transformation. Human capital development is a strong determinant of how the inherent opportunities are taken and how underlying challenges are addressed. And this is exactly where VET can and must play a vital role: with changes in traditional employment structures, the platform economy and the growing importance of SMEs to function in global value chains and taken into account the need to adapt continuously to changing situations, VET needs to support new skill sets such as entrepreneurship in green and digital economy, career management skills and focus more on adaptability and problem solving.

However, in order to fulfil this important role, VET providers and organizations need to incorporate new methodologies and concepts that will allow them to establish a close and sustainable connection with private (SMEs, industry, etc.) and public stakeholders that will allow them to:

•  Design and implement demand-oriented and opportunity-driven VET interventions;
•  Improve the responsiveness of VET to the changes and challenges that the Green and Digital transition brings. Against the aforementioned background, the LIVEVET project aims to modernize the VET organizations and providers by introducing an innovative business model based on the Living Lab methodology. Living Labs are user-centered, open innovation ecosystems operating in real-life environments using iterative feedback processes throughout a lifecycle approach of an innovation with the aim to create sustainable impact. They focus on co-creation, rapid prototyping & testing and scaling-up innovations, providing (different types of) joint-value to the involved stakeholders. Within this context, Living Labs operate as intermediaries/orchestrators among citizens, research organisations, companies and government agencies/levels