ZSI Quarterly Summary Vol. 2 2013

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April 2013: Editorial talk with Berenike Ecker , A&C

Ageing Society, Migration &

Remigration

The phenomenon of an ageing popula-tion has gained central importance for our society. The ZSI Work & Equal Op-portunities Unit (A&C) discovered the subject early. In the synopsis of the studies and projects of ZSI: Which are the challenges and opportunities of an ageing society?

My vision regarding the unstoppable demographic

change is to find a different approach concerning work in

general and particularly older workers and employees.

Nowadays, the majority of people perceive the third

phase of life mostly as negative. One keyword is anti-

ageing: People do a lot to keep away age. Far too often

people express an attitude, which equates work with

units of time until holidays or retirement starts. Only

then real life begins. I hope that innovative forms of gen-

eration management and new collective images will trig-

ger a change. These images should represent work as a

fulfilling act, as well as valuing older workers on the basis

of their wealth of experience and knowledge. Older em-

ployees can bring a lot of potential and experience into

the current world of work. In the Territorial Employment

Pacts (TEPs), with the nationwide coordination unit

(Kooo) located at the ZSI, experts from different fields

and institutions work to support positive development

concerning these challenges. Moreover, challenges and

opportunities related to demographic change should be

considered together. Demographic change and the asso-

ciated impacts relate to political and social units such as

state, administration, municipalities, or different policies

in different forms and intensity. This also increasingly

applies to the field of policies of labour market and em-

ployment, economy, social affairs, health and migration,

integration & discrimination. At ZSI, we advise stakehold-

ers of these political fields. Moreover, we are research-

ing and coordinating thematic networks. For example,

our staff deals with issues regarding the support of older

workers, as well as the (further) development of strate-

gies and concepts for the integration of (long-term) un-

employed elderly in the labour market. In the Territorial

Employment Pacts (TEPs), experts develop e.g. ageing-

appropriate education and training concepts. This hap-

pens in close cooperation with the provinces, the labour

market service, social partners and educational institu-

tions.

At this point, I also would like to mention another cur-

rent project on participation and empowerment sup-

ported by ZSI: The Green Paper "CE ageing strategy" of

the project "CE Ageing Platform" includes recommenda-

tions for action and measures to tackle the challenges of

demographic change in Central Europe.

Since 1900, life expectancy has risen by roughly 50%.

Forecasts of various studies show a tendency: the aver-

age age will increase, and at the same time the popula-

tion will decrease, especially in Central Europe. Further-

more, the group of elderly seems to consist mostly of

women.

Vol.2 April— May— June 2013

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‘Older people are no longer the other.‘ One of the key ideas of Sarah Harper in Mature societies: planning for our future selves. In: Daedalus. Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Winter 2006

‘Creating greater solidarity between able and disabled people, between the old and the young, between women and men, between re-gions, and between those who are wealthy and those who are less lucky in life. This is really the vision we have - and have been promoting for 10 years now.‘

Anne-Sophie Parent Secretary General, AGE Platform Europe in 2011: www.socialplatform.org

‘I hope I die before I get old.’

A line of a pop classic of the British band “THE WHO” in 1965: The WHO, now in their 60s, were giving a vivid concert on the occasion of the Olympic Games in London in 2012.

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Do you see deficits and potentials in

terms of the issue of equal opportuni-

ties?

This is a field in which one can put many accents.

A fundamental approach is to strengthen the ed-

ucation and training opportunities for women.

The target audience of older women – both em-

ployed as well as senior citizens - is affected by

poverty at remarkably higher rates if they have

little education, only compulsory education or no

education degree at all. In the federal plan for

senior citizens it is also pointed out that women

of this age group are more at risk to be socially

excluded. Both politically and socially there are

very often few avenues of participation.

Another aspect are twists and turns in people's

biographies, which can be found in the vita of an

older generation, but also in younger generations

of women. Those women were often only shortly

formally employed in their professional lives.

They disclaimed a professional career because of

their family situation. At present, the affected

group unfortunately suffers from poorly paid so-

cial insurance tax, which is needed for an ade-

quate pension. Moreover, they have often earned

less than their male colleagues during their pro-

fessional career. However, the so -called gender

pay gap still affects all women in Austria and in

other European countries irrespective of age. At

the institutional level, responsible persons are

trying to implement gender equality objectives in

the course of the current new programme of EU

cohesion policy.

Besides the top issue of Ageing Society,

Migration and Remigration have become

key issues. Which approaches does your

team follow in the projects of ZSI's A&C

unit?

Remigration is a relatively new direction of thrust

in the context of research on migration. Re-

searchers from A&C started to dedicate their

work to remigration more intensively roughly two

years ago. In this context I like to mention the

project RETURN. The study focuses on returners

in Central Europe: Who belongs to this group?

Who returns? First results show that returners

are relatively young people, who often have skills

acquired during their stay abroad. The project

supports the development of strategies and

means of support, how returners can re -establish

themselves in their countries of origin and can re -

feed their experience from abroad in their home

regions. I call it "brain drain the other way

around". Knowledge and human capital can flow

back to the affected regions. In the best case the-

se phenomena contribute to an economic

strengthening of these regions. In general, remi-

gration is a difficult field of research, since data

is still scarce.

In general, A&C has gained expertise in the field

of migration research for many years. Many pro-

jects of A&C are worthy of mention. The project

“Vocational Qualification of Immigrants in Tyrol:

Trends and Potential Interventions” is highly topi-

cal. Other significant examples are “How Well

Does Education Travel”, “Social Advancement

from Migration Milieus” and “Educational Back-

ground of Migrants”.

Do you see a shift of paradigm concern-

ing our future world of work?

In my opinion, this question is connected to the

field of trend research or foresight. Nevertheless,

I have the courage to say that a paradigm shift

has already occurred. It is clear that classic pro-

fessional careers, as they developed during the

last 30 or 40 years, have changed. For example,

former collective images to start professional

training in a particular company and to remain

„To me it seems highly relevant to perceive the cultural aspect of work. Nowadays there is an attitude of many well-educated, to look for satisfying and to them meaningful jobs.“

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there until retirement have fundamentally

changed and become reality for a minority of

workers. The use of technology and modified

working modes—including new forms of commu-

nication or working time models up to telework

- are no longer really new and are successfully

practised in many companies.

To me it seems highly relevant to perceive the

cultural aspect of work. Nowadays there is an

attitude of many of the well-educated, who are

looking for satisfying and meaningful jobs. In

this context, a higher standard has evolved,

which I can also perceive in my personal envi-

ronment. In the best case, work should be cus-

tomizable to the priorities of varying life peri-

ods. There is also a growing challenge for com-

panies: Younger employees might no longer be

strongly bound to a given company.

For more than 20 years the Centre for So-

cial Innovation (ZSI) has been a pioneer in

the field of social innovation and innova-

tion research. In accordance with the claim

of the ZSI, I would like to ask: Are all inno-

vations socially relevant?

There have always been social innovations. To

identify them as such is often a matter of point

of view and of definition. To stay in my topical

area, the social partners or trade unions come

to mind as they represent a remarkable social

innovation in the period of their foundation. To-

day prominent gaps and discontinuities in com-

petences, for example concerning the service

problems concerning young people, who get

stuck in a period of change from school to voca-

tional education and training, are compensated

by innovative activities of the earlier mentioned

TEPs in Austria. One of my results was an inno-

vative form of start-up consulting, which focus-

es on the development of intercultural compe-

tencies. Another important example of a social

innovation in the field of Work & Equal Oppor-

tunities is the guaranteed minimum income

(Bedarfsorientierte Mindestsicherung), which

was established in Austria in 2011. Many more

social innovations can be found in the dynamic

fields of solidarity and ethnic economies: Col-

laborative consumption like car sharing is an-

other crucial social innovation to me, even if

usually not being identified as such.

Introducing Berenike Ecker

Berenike Ecker studied Geography at the University

of Vienna. Afterwards she passed the post graduate

European studies program at the University of Vien-

na. She gathered professional experience as coordi-

nator in the network of regional management in

Austria and as research coordinator in the Universi-

ty of Applied Sciences bfi Vienna. Since 2010, she

has worked at ZSI - Centre for Social Innovation as a

research manager. She is mainly involved in the Co-

ordination Unit (Kooo) of the Austrian Territorial

Employment Pacts (TEP) and is interim Head of Unit

of Work & Equal Opportunities (Arbeit und Chan-

cengleichheit, A&C)

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May 2013 : Editorial by Josef Hochgerner

Austrian Climate Days - 14th edition The increasing involvement of ZSI in research on climate issues

'14. Österreichischer Klimatag': University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (Universität für Bodenkultur), 4th - 5th of April 2013

The conference setting of the annual "Climate Day" provided an overview concerning current topics rele-vant in climate change, research results, adaptation and mitigation strategies. This year about 170 partici-pants were registered from science, public administra-tion and many stakeholder groupings. It took place on April 4-5, 2013, at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU).

This year's event was for the first time organised under the responsibility of the Climate Change Centre Austria (CCCA), an association connecting climate research or-ganisations of Austria in a bottom-up process. ZSI is founding member of CCCA, and was also involved in the conference. The CCCA was officially established in July 2011 as a coordinating facility to promote and support climate research in Austria with particular focus on strengthening the climate research landscape in Aus-tria, facilitating the education of a new generation of researchers and supporting knowledge transfer, and advising politics and society.

Besides core scientific parts - on meteorology and im-pact of climate change e.g. on insects, forestry or heat islands in cities - the climate days 2013 also dealt with issues from social scientific realms, such as "Economy and politics" and "Policy measures". You may find the programme of the conference and a documentation online here.

At present the CCCA is developing a strategic "Science Plan", aiming to instigate nationally and internationally significant and practically relevant research in four main areas:

Physical scientific foundations of climate research

Societal drivers and social dimensions of climate change

Impact, adaptation and vulnerability

Mitigation and societal transformation

Climate and energy are two of the most important chal-

lenges facing developments in the 21st century. What

is required is better foresight and comprehension of

ongoing processes, and to shape social change includ-

ing the necessity of specific social innovation. The ZSI

contributes to the Science Plan, relying on own experi-

ences, competencies and networks from a growing

number of EU projects working on respective topics.

Among these projects are Covenant CapaCITY, SOCIEN-

TIZE, and some more to come, which are currently in

the process of negotiation with the European Commis-

sion to be launched later this year or early 2014.

Introducing Josef Hochgerner

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Josef Hochgerner is founder and sci-

entific director of the Centre for Social Innovation in

Vienna. He participated as a a coordinator and part-

ner in more than 30 EU projects and is an expert in

the field of social partner organisations of national

and European agencies of the research and innova-

tion support. Hochgerner is teaching in the the con-

text of vocational and adult education and lecturing

at many European Universities: 1995-98 he was Pro-

fessor at the University of Natural Resources and

Life Sciences (BOKU), since 2007 at the University of

Vienna; 2001-2005 Josef Hochgerner was President

of the Austrian Society for Sociology. More recently

he founded in cooperation with the Danube Univer-

sity (DUK) the first worldwide Master of Arts in So-

cial Innovation, and is currently president of the Eu-

ropean School of Social Innovation (ESSI).

Links

www.donau-uni.ac.at/de/studium/

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May 2013: Editorial talk to Florian Gruber, F&E

Focus on International Research Cooperations ZSI’s topical unit Research Policy & Development (F&E) is currently work-ing in over 20 international projects: why this focus on international re-search cooperation?

F&E is the largest area at ZSI and very successful in the sup-port of international cooperations in the context of the 7th EU Research Framework Programme. In the year 2014 the current Framework Programme will be replaced by Horizon 2020, which will create new working conditions: For the first time the programme covers the whole spectrum of science, technology and innovation under a joint roof and is expected to contribute significantly to the realisation of the European Research Area – so far the view on the European context. The unit F&E strongly deals with the promotion of the co-operation of Europe with non-EU States, with which the Eu-ropean Union wants to start new collaborations in science and research or to deepen existing ones. Such countries from include our direct neighbourhood, the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe, but also the emerging regions of knowledge in the world such as India, Russia, Southeast Asia, and South America. ZSI also runs projects with countries that have well established and excellent research, e.g. Canada. The context of the increasing importance of the new regions of knowledge is that the dominance of the closed triad of North America - Japan - Europe increasingly has been broken up in recent years.

Global awareness grew on the insight that sustainable eco-nomic progress can be achieved in particular through the strengthening of research capacities. In the deepening of cooperation with the emerging regions of knowledge the challenges for Europe are different than with its established cooperation partners, where networks already exist and the major players are known.

The world increasingly moves togeth-

er: How is the global networking of the

European Research Area supported by

projects of ZSI’s unit F&E?

The European Commission has developed special project

types for international networking: ERA-NETs, INCO-NETs

and BILATs, which act on three levels, namely on political,

programmatic and research level. Our project partners are

above all intermediary agencies, such as the CNRS in France,

DLR in Germany, or the NSTDA in Thailand. At the heart of all

these cooperative efforts are the promotion of international

networking of researchers and innovators, the analysis for

evidence-based policy making, as well as the increased visi-

bility of the European Research Area in the countries.

For example, projects lead by ZSI include the WBC-INCO.NET

project with Western Balkans, the BILAT-UKR*AINA to

strengthen the networking between the EU and the Ukraine,

as well as INDIGO Policy, the upcoming BILAT with India.

What are the outcomes of these inter-

national cooperation projects?

ERA.NET is an instrument of the European Commission,

whereby European countries jointly develop research fund-

ing programmes for the networking with regions outside of

Europe. For example, in the ERA.NET with India we devel-

oped four research promotion tenders in the field of moni-

toring and evaluation support, two with the Department of

Biotechnology and two with the Department of Science and

Technology, each with a European consortium of funding.

INCO.NET and BILAT projects focus more on the political

level and support networking among government depart-

ments, intermediate agencies and researchers. One of the

benefits of these efforts is p.r for the European Research

Area and the European support programmes such as Horizon

2020 in the target countries, another is the acceleration of

the personal exchange of players.

The ZSI also supports these processes at an analytical level.

An example of this is the study edited by ZSI experts:

"Spotlight on: Science and Technology Cooperation Between

Southeast Asia and Europe. Analyses and recommendations

from the SEA-EU-NET project" (2011). In the focus of this

analysis are the internationalization strategies of South-East

Asian countries and questions like: What are the potentials,

the obstacles and the barriers to research networks between

Southeast Asia and Europe? In addition, the F&E team devel-

oped scenarios on how future collaborations might look like,

which were based on a diverse portfolio of methods of social

„The unit F&E strongly deals with the promotion of the co-operation of Europe with non-EU States,

with which the European Union wants to start new collaborations in science and research or to

deepen existing ones.“

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sciences, such as network analyses or bibliometric analyses.

Another interesting example is the publication: "Korea and

Europe - meeting through science. Exploring the opportuni-

ties of R&D cooperation with KORANET" (2013). In this vol-

ume ZSI experts provide inputs on analytical and policy levels.

What was decisive for the success of

the ZSI in the 7th Framework Pro-

gramme of the European Union?

Decisive for success was positioning ZSI as a competent and

reliable partner for local stakeholders in Austria, such as the

Ministry of Science and Research, as well as being interna-

tionally well connected. For example, we were coordinators

of one of the first horizontal international cooperation pro-

jects in the Research Framework Programme, the SEE-

ERA.NET with the Western Balkans (2004-2008). Due to the

success of these projects, we were able to show that we are

locally and internationally well connected!

RTI enfolds research, technology and

innovation, three essential components

of the current discourse concerning re-

search policies…

In the past years, it became evident that researchers need

support for the implementation and exploitation of results. A

good example can be found in Singapore, where a focus was

developed on "translational research", thus on the translation

of research results into economic success. In the programme

Horizon 2020 "innovation" has moved to the centre and will

concern ZSI in the next few years.

The common challenge in the field of

RTD is the rapid change, which must be

dealt with on a political level: Which

measures support evidence-based

policy-making?

Common issues within the projects are developed on the ba-

sis of national priorities. One example is a joint funding call

with India triggered by political discussions on the use of wa-

ter, which can be summarized under the headline "war for

water". But aside from political priorities thematic foci can be

found on the basis of co-publications and co-patent analysis.

This is another field of expertise of ZSI.

Another important aspect in the support of implementation

of international RTD cooperation are questions on

"Intellectual Property Rights”, i.e. the analyses of the legal

situation regarding intellectual property. On this topic, we are

currently working in a number of international projects.

We are also proud being contributors to the development of

the “Innovation Union Scoreboard” (IUS), a tool provided by

the European Commission, facilitating the analysis and com-

parison of national innovation systems at a European level. In

this context, we are also involved as one supporting partner

with analytical expertise.

All innovations are socially

relevant…

The ZSI supports the European internationalisation of RTD.

The leading principle for the ZSI is to enable cooperation at

eye level for scientists of all regions. In this context, the ZSI

topical area F&E has also a focus on evaluation and monitor-

ing the contribution of science and research to societal devel-

opment.

Introducing Florian Gruber

Florian Gruber is interim head of the Research Policy & Devel-

opment (F&E) Unit at ZSI since 2013. After studying social and

cultural anthropology (with a focus on India and resistance

options for subordinate groups), followed by 14 months as

project coordinator at WUS-Austria in Sarajevo, Bosnia and

Herzegovina, and working in the area of intercultural compe-

tencies at the Danube University Krems.

Since 2005 Florian Gruber has been a research manager at

ZSI and already assumed successfully the interim lead of the

unit F&E in 2011. The geographical focus of his work includes

the Western Balkans, South-Eastern Europe and India.

Links

www.zsi.at/en/fe

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+++ Inco.Net CA/SC presents results: The consortium members of the EC-funded FP7 project Inco.Net CA/SC, in which ZSI is participating as analytical project partner, were invited by the Ministry of Industry and New Technologies and the Na-tional Agency for Technological Development (NATD) to present the results of the Inco-nets targeting Central Asia at the VI. Astana Economic Forum/VIII Innovation Congress,which has been held in Astana from 22-24 May 2013.

+++ Review on foresight workshops: In the framework of the ERA-NET project with Russia (ERA.Net RUS) the ZSI orga-nized workshops for thematic ‘foresight'. With the help of the foresight method road-mapping relevant topics were identified for the EU-Russia research cooperation, namely in the fields of Social Sciences and Humanities, health and nanotechnologies, as well as in environmental and climate change. The workshops were a common project of the Joint Research Centre – Insti-tute for Prospective Technological Studies (JRC-IPTS) of the European Commission and the National Research University - Higher School of Economics (Russia). They were held in April and May, 2013, in Brussels and Moscow. Scientists and research-ers from EU Member States, from countries associated to the EU framework programme, as well as from Russia participated in this event. More details available: www.eranet-rus.eu or MAILTO Manfred Spiesberger

+++ WBC-INCO.NET met in Montenegro: Two internal working meetings were recently held in Budva, Montenegro by WBC-INCO.NET back to back with the 14th Steering Platform on Research for the Western Balkans. On the other hand, on the 4th and 5th June, all project team members conducted their General Assembly. At this event, ongoing project amendments, as well as current and upcoming activities, were discussed in depth. New activities are indeed planned in the brief time, such as for instance Support to the implementation of good practice examples.

+++ KORANET publication out now: The KORANET consortium proudly presents the 2nd Edition of the KORANET publica-tion 'Korea and Europe - Meeting through Science’. This final KORANET publication is prepared for S&T stakeholders in Europe and Korea, including researchers, research institutions and funding agencies, policy makers at national and international level, cluster managers (in particular those involved or interested in S&T cooperation) and all those responsible for international collaboration. The publication is available in print and online. Please send your request to: [email protected], or download from: http://www.koranet.eu/_media/Korea_and_Europe_Meeting_through_Science.pdf

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Imprint

Editor: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Josef Hochgerner

Editorial Assistance: Pamela Bartar

Zentrum für Soziale Innovation (ZSI)

Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI)

Linke Wienzeile 246

Vienna , Austria

Contents & copyright

ZSI team of authors, 2013

www.zsi.at

VIDEO available on VIMEO www.vimeo.com

Facing the Grand Challenges: Facets of Social Innovation Vol. 4

The video highlights social innovation as benefi-cial in dealing with the so called "Grand Chal-lenges", and presents the specific approach and a couple of successful projects of the Cen-tre of Social Innovation (ZSI).