Abstract:

Innovation and value creation within the EU industry are profoundly changing, driven by a new consumer who expects value-co-creation, connectivity, and real-time performance measurements. Consequently, on 2013 the European Committee for Standardization published the European Technical Specification CEN/TS 16555-1 on Innovation Management Systems to assist organisations in the deployment of innovation.

To correctly establish an Innovation Management System, it is important to implement a strategy on Technology Watch (TW), also named as Competitive Intelligence (CI), key instrument defined by the Observatory for Industrial Technology Foresight as “the structured system for searching, detecting and analysing the environment to transmit information and knowledge continuously to be aware of the main activities in their sector”.

TW have become crucial business practice to compete in today's increasingly digital, global and dynamic environment. In this sense, SMEs from sectors that traditionally follow fashion trends, such as furniture and textile, are starting to realise about the importance of monitoring the business environment to learn about the state-of-the-art trends in the future and to adapt to the market changes, and furthermore, the importance of the key staff to have the right skills for integrating such practices into daily activities.

To face this challenge, this work presents the methodology follow to define the knowledge gaps within the industry regarding TW through a survey in different European countries that allow to understand the current level of readiness and implementation of TW systems. Moreover, with the results of this transnational survey and the support of the European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations (ESCO) database it has been established the necessary learning outcomes as a base for a future Vocational Education and Training (VET) course for professionals of the textile and furniture companies, to help and guide them in the implementation of a TW system.

Acknowledgement:
This work has been done in the framework of the SIBILA project, co-financed by the Erasmus + programme.

Keywords:

Technology watch, learning outcomes, VET, manufacturing industry.