Innovation is relevant not only to economic sustainability but also to social and cultural life. Therefore, the creation of an organizational climate enabling and catalyzing innovation deserves special attention and needs to be explored from a sound operational perspective. Cities embed this organizational climate (Jacobs, 1969) and are by nature innovation generative systems. It is within this perspective that the DESIGNSCAPES project aims to realize a better uptake, and further enhancement and upscaling, of Design enabled Innovation in Europe, through direct financial support to flagship and innovation generating initiatives as well as a huge capacity building effort targeting multiple stakeholder groups (citizens, researchers, practitioners, innovators and policy makers). In so doing, we will foster the linkages between research, policy and practice and contribute to making Europe a global leader in the domain. The main features of the DESIGNSCAPES project are the following: - It builds upon the generative potential of innovation in cities - It leverages Design Thinking and Design Driven Innovation concepts as blueprints. - It has a direct and purposeful focus on the scalability potential of Design enabled Innovation - It proposes an original, holistic, evaluation, replication and impacts assessment framework. - It makes use of a “supportive governance approach”. Expected results include: a City Snap Shot tested in 10 countries and 12 cities, a EU Catalogue of Design enabled innovations, Training Modules for local facilitators and innovators, Policy Briefs, e-Publications and a final Conference. Approximately €1.5 million will distributed among 50+ new Design enabled initiatives as required by the H2020 call through 3 consecutive yearly rounds of a 3-staged Technical and Financial instrument akin to the US and NL SBIR program and the SME instrument of the EC.

Resilience is defined by the United Nations as “the ability to resist, absorb and accommodate to the effects of a hazard, in a timely and efficient manner”. Thus, resilient communities are those in which their citizens, environment, businesses, and infrastructures have the capacity to withstand, adapt, and recover in a timely manner from any kind of hazards they face, either planned or unplanned. In recent years efforts have been spent to tackle resilience and there is, still, a long path forward in defining an EU valid and sound approach to the problem. RESILOC aims at studying and implementing a holistic framework of studies, methods and software instruments that combines the physical with the less tangible aspects associated with human behaviour. The study-oriented section of the framework will move from a thorough collection and analysis of literature and stories from the many approaches to resilience adopted all over the World. The results of the studies will lead to the definition of a set of new methods and strategies where the assessment of the resilience indicators of a community will be performed together with simulations on the “what-if” certain measures are taken. These studies and methods will serve for designing and implementing two software instruments: 1. the RESILOC inventory, a comprehensive, live, structure for collecting, classifying and using information on cities and local communities, implemented as a Software as a Service (SaaS). 2. The RESILOC Cloud-based platform for assessing and calculating the resilience indicators of a city or a community, for developing localised strategies and verifying their impacts on the resilience of the community. The Cloud platform, a combination of SaaS and PaaS, includes the inventory as its repository. The project will make use of built solutions in four field trials and includes a high-profile communication plan, heavily based on Social Media platforms.

Youth unemployment is a long-term issue in Europe. Whilst significant progress has been made in the last years with policies such as the Youth Guarantee, there were still over 12% of YP aged 15-29 not in employment, education or training (NEET) in 2019. This does not only result in losses to EU economies in terms of social benefit payments or taxable income but has also longer-term consequences for YP people’s life chances. ComNetNEET partners analysed the quantitative situation regarding NEETs and 2 main lines of intervention were distinguished: intervention in education, training and (re-)insertion in education, training or work and intervention in social inclusion. Both are dependent on each other as education and training can be a means of social inclusion. The project’s main aims were to develop an innovative methodology, drawing on existing best practices in partners’ countries, to pilot it in PT, IT and ES, and to analyse the outputs, outcomes and impacts of these pilots. There were several objectives underlying these overall aims. These included: (1) To IDENTIFY THE STATE OF THE ART AND GOOD PRACTICES OF SOCIAL INCLUSION (using work based learning strategies) targeted at YP in partners’ countries; (3) To DESIGN, CONCEIVE AND DEVELOP A MODEL OF INTERVENTION relevant to the partners countries; (4) To conduct a PILOT APPLICATION of the methodology at local level in PT, ES and IT; (5) To promote AWARENESS MEETINGS in the context of the project to EXCHANGE EXPERIENCES and identify best practices already in place; (6) To validate the model through a LOCAL MULTI-STAKEHOLDER approach and to EVALUATE THE IMPACT of the model; (7) To reinforce and match the role of different local/regional stakeholders to find the best means of optimization, and increase the NETWORKING CAPACITY, with a view to enhance NEETs social inclusion and employability; (8) To DISSEMINATE and EXPLORE, the project results among relevant beneficiaries and ensure their SUSTAINABILITY, at a practice level, through the training of professionals and, at the institutional level, influencing policies and changing the culture of services provided. To achieve these aims and objectives, the project produced 4 IOs, organised 3 focus groups (30 part), several ME (networking activities (193 part) + 3 national seminars (127 part) in PT, ES and IT + 1 European final Conference (72 part)), 6 TMP (90 part), 2 LA (C1, with 13 and C2 with 37 part.), a dissemination strategy and a solid evaluation plan, and impacting directly 615 target groups representatives, more 171 than foreseen in the project application. The partnership worked cooperatively to develop a model of intervention, test it in 3 partner countries (PT, ES and IT) and evaluate its impact. The intervention combined innovative elements designed to address key local needs in target countries, with an evidence review of EU and national literature and existing good practices identified in partner countries (https://neetsinaction.eu/outputs/). The project achieved an impact in the 3 main target groups: at micro level (YP in a NEET situation); at meso level (professionals working for and with YP in a NEET situation); and at macro level (the ecosystem of organisations that are part of the NEET issue, at local/regional and national level). The project sought to an alternative solution to strategies and policies previously implemented, by strengthening and using community networks. Following a preparation phase which included a territory diagnostic, the selection of YP in a NEET situation as well as the identification of possible members for the local community of stakeholders’ networks, the main part of the piloting, conduced within IO2, involved supporting NEETs and building the networks. Across ES, IT and PT more than 50 YP in a NEET situation were engaged and took part in individual coaching-based sessions, group sessions and job-experiences, based on an individual action plan (IAP). The community networks were developed and will be maintained to create a shared ambition and understanding of ways to integrate NEETs as well as to give them a better opportunity to gain access to the world of work. Impact in YP in a NEET situation: significant improvement of their awareness of possible pathways, of their employability skills as well as of their social capital; mitigation of the danger of starting a vicious cycle of a perceived feeling of failure in life, increased potential of contributing to society and to combat a general feeling of “worthlessness”.Impact in professionals: availability of a methodology of intervention, practical tools and a better preparation to guide and support YP in a NEET situation.Impact at system/policy level: an increased awareness of the need for better coordination of local approaches for the integration of NEETs; an increased awareness that closer employer-community-VET provider-Youth networking is a valuable tool to foster the social integration of YP in a NEET situation.

TCBL uses Europe’s Textiles & Clothing (T&C) industry as test beds for evolutionary-driven co-design, dynamic optimisation and deployment of business models. It aims to increase the performance of a sector that, over the past two decades, upheld three main strategies to handle global competitive pressure: cost-oriented, product/service-oriented and productivity-oriented. TCBL provides a business experimentation framework for exploring variations on such strategies. The framework will be supported by Knowledge Spaces as a generative force and Business Services as an enabling force. A network of Business Labs will be set up, based on three key variations: Design Labs (e.g. creating emotionally-oriented immaterial value), Making Labs (e.g. converting skilled labour into material value), and Place Labs (e.g. generating spatial community- and socially- oriented value). Each of these Labs will explore the issues of cost, product/service and productivity enhancement in a transversal manner and from cross-disciplinary perspectives - including economic, anthropological, and engineering approaches as well as new business values such as environmental and social responsibility, sharing economy, social enterprising, customer-driven small series production (the focus of this call) and emergent or disruptive technologies. With these tools, and supported by an open Associates Programme, TCBL will carry out real-life experimentation and market deployment of a number of Supply Chain, Localisation, Business, Skill Management and Policy innovations involving no fewer than 160 workshops, laboratories and manufacturing plants at EU level with at least 15,000 T&C workers involved. In addition, 10 new innovative companies will be generated within the supply chain of T&C, enabling the diffusion and scaling up of results. By so doing, a knowledge based, transformational ecosystem will be developed, integrated into an open, yet structured platform environment.