Shifting Gears

An initiative to bolster efforts in six Midwest states to help working-age adults who need to expand their skills.

Skills For Chicagoland's Future

New City Of Chicago And Cook County Program To Put Chicagoans Back To Work

Employment Program

Creating Economic Opportunity

Employment

Employment Program Staff
Whitney Smith
Matthew Muench
Alyson Koblas

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Innovation

Employment Program Strategy: Innovation

Goal: Identify, develop, test and promote ideas with the potential to create step-change improvement in pursuit of the Employment Program’s goals, and that don’t currently have a champion or a natural home; also, cultivate innovative thinking in the workforce development community.

Theory of Change: The identification and cultivation of new approaches to skill development has the potential to improve program effectiveness, expand access, lower cost, build new supporting constituencies, etc. Because public organizations underinvest in such innovation, Joyce investment in this area can generate a step-change improvement in the field.

The Joyce Approach

Generate New Ideas

Fund partner organizations to manage specific idea-generation processes that might include prize competitions, invention convenings, innovators-in-residence, or other techniques.

Develop and Test New Ideas