Innosuisse Flagship Initiative

Swiss Circular Economy of Skills and Competences (SCESC)

As part of a Switzerland-wide research group, the IWP-HSG is working on the development of a circular economy for skills and competencies. This should enable individuals to gain fair access to further training and retraining measures and to develop future-proof skills portfolios.

The SCESC project idea is based on a common language of skills and is carried out in coordination and cooperation with existing structures of the Swiss VET system. As part of the Individual Competence Portfolio sub-project, the IWP-HSG is developing solutions for how platform users can document, validate and present their level of competence to third parties.

The focus of competence documentation is on taking into account both formally and non-formally and informally acquired competences. The validation of skills is to be implemented using a badging system that recognizes different ways of acquiring skills. The end product is ultimately a structured, job market-relevant Competence Vitae that shows the level of competence of platform users.

First personal team meeting to celebrate the flagship approval by Innosuisse.

Team meeting at the University of St.Gallen

Explanation of the project at the 50th anniversary of IWP-HSG by Marco Strate

Visualisation of our research work

Find out more about the project idea and the sub-projects involved in the Flagship Initiative in this video. One focus is on the research work of the IWP-HSG as part of the sub-project "Individual Competence Portfolio".

Publications of the project

Innosuisse Flagship Initiativeexpand_less

With the "Flagship Initiative" funding instrument, the Swiss Innovation Agency (Innosuisse) aims to boost systemic and transdisciplinary innovations that are central to the current economic and social challenges in Switzerland. The initiatives focus on challenges that affect several players and/or can only be mastered through their cooperation. With their systemic approach, flagships complement already well-established, bottom-up-oriented innovation projects (Innosuisse, 2022a). Innosuisse launched the first call for flagship initiatives in January 2021. As a result, 15 applications were approved, involving a total of 85 Swiss research partners and 221 implementation partners (companies and non-profit organizations) (Innosuisse, 2022b, 2022c).

One of the 15 approved research projects is the Swiss Circular Economy of Skills and Competences, consisting of a diverse consortium of Swiss universities EHB, EPFL, HSG, UZH, ZHAW, the implementation partners Evrlearn AG and Axelra AG, as well as the associations SwissBanking, Arbeitgeber Banken, SwissICT and SwissMem.

Companies and training providers should also benefit from the research work in the long term: Companies will receive a platform to identify and close skills gaps, and training providers will be offered sustainable training concepts and a new approach to course creation (Innosuisse, 2022c).