September 2017
Textile and Clothing Business Labs
TCBL Policy Brief The present policy brief reports the main findings of the policy environment analysis that has been conducted during the first two years of the TCBL project. Building on landmark European plans regarding industry and competitiveness as well as on key policy documents specifically addressing the T&C sector, the brief provides bite-sized insights to all interested stakeholders situated in the T&C sector. In line with priorities lying at the core of TCBL, a close eye is kept on SMEs, which – in spite of being the backbone of Europe’s economy – often face significant obstacles. The document is structured as follows: initially a ‘big picture’ of the policy environment in which TCBL operates is outlined and it is subsequently detailed through the analysis of the European industrial policy background, the identification of five key trends shaping the evolution of the overall European economy, and a discussion of the most prominent T&C-related policies. Finally, some concluding takeaways and opportunities are presented.
TCBL Policy Environment Overview The context in which TCBL is set up is the European industrial landscape, represented by the wind blowing on the top of the picture.
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As the windmill converts the wind into power to crush grain or produce electricity, TCBL unleashes new creative energies to support European SMEs, making available an unprecedented experimentation playground that intends to significantly improve the prosperity of Europe’s diffused system of production.
EU Policy Background
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The windmill metaphor has been conceived with the purpose of succinctly representing the TCBL policy environment.
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As a matter of fact, the policy environment in which TCBL project operates is influenced by three prominent factors.
Emerging Trends at EU Level Emerging trends shaping the overall EU industrial environment are depicted through the windmill. The tower is associated to the ‘collaboration’ trend, which is considered of paramount importance in view of both the TCBL values and the recurrence of collaboration as enabling practice for the remaining four trends.
EU T&C-related Policies The windmill is the fulcrum around which T&C-related policies gravitate. On the one hand, T&C-related policies are part of the general European industrial background and, on the other hand, they harness the potential of the key trends to ignite sectorial transformation.
EU Policy Background Europe 2020 (EU2020)
Industrial Landscape vision 2025 (ilv2025)
The EU2020 plan depicts the European Union’s ten-year growth strategy launched in 2010: it aims at creating the conditions for a smarter, more sustainable, and more inclusive socio-economic development.
The ILV2025 provides a comprehensive view of the European industrial system and aims to study how the industrial landscape is evolving, which are the main driving factors and how they are reciprocally related.
Circular Economy aims to “redefine products and services to design waste out, while minimising negative impacts” (Ellen MacArthur Foundation). The circular economy ambition goes well beyond recycling as it advocates the creation of a restorative industrial system aimed at designing out waste. Forecasts related to the circular economy estimate that shifting towards circularity could add $1 trillion to the global economy by 2025 and create 100,000 new jobs within the next five years. The European Union could benefit from an annual productivity improvement of 3% and a 7% GDP growth with respect to current development scenarios.
Emerging Trends at EU Level The policy environment of interest for the TCBL project – and, more in general, for the T&C sector at large – is influenced by five cross-industry trends currently shaping the evolution of the overall European economy.
At the end of 2015 the EC adopted a circular economy package (EU Action Plan for the Circular Economy) that defines an action plan encompassing measures covering the whole cycle, from production and consumption to waste management and the market for secondary raw materials. The Resource Efficient Europe flagship and the Eco-label initiative work in this direction as well, in the quest for sustainability and resource efficiency. The relevance of circular economy for the T&C sector is noticeable. In this regard, it is worth mentioning the Circular Fibres Initiative launched by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in May 2017. This action aims to bring together key industry stakeholders to build a circular economy for textiles starting with clothing. Moreover, looking at corporate level, companies such as Mud Jeans are already testing the waters of the circular economy paradigm. The core business of the Dutch company, in fact, consists in leasing its apparel to consumers; after the lease period of one year, consumers can switch them for another pair and continue leasing, return them for recycling or upcycling purposes, or keep them.
The term Social Innovation is an umbrella concept for inventing and incubating solutions to modern time challenges in a creative and positive way. Even if there is not a unique and universally accepted definition for social innovation, we make reference to the well-known Open Book of Social Innovation (Young Foundation), according to which “social innovations are innovations that are social both in their ends and in their means”.
To this end, the EU launched a wealth of initiatives, some of which are mentioned below.
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The Smart Specialisation Platform for Industrial Modernisation (S3P-Industry) aims to support EU regions committed to generate a pipeline of industrial investment projects following a bottom-up approach implemented through interregional cooperation, cluster participation and industry involvement.
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The RegioTex Initiative intends to strengthen local and regional competencies in the T&C sector in order to reinforce regional innovation structures and capacities as well as to establish effective European collaboration among regional actors.
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The Research and Innovation Smart Specialisation Strategy (RIS3) encourages national and regional authorities across Europe to design smart specialization strategies in entrepreneurial discovery process. By doing this, European Structural Investment Funds (ESIF) can be used more efficiently and synergies between different EU, national and regional policies can be increased. The RIS3 requires EU Member States and regions to identify the knowledge specializations that best fit their innovation potential, based on their assets and capabilities.
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Social innovation initiatives are promising in the T&C sector, which is considered a fertile soil to test, implement and diffuse socially and environmentally conscious innovations. An example in this vein is Made in Carcere, a non-profit social co-operative aimed at offering work opportunities in the textile sector to disadvantaged people (detainee women).
Smart Specialization is about identifying the unique characteristics and assets of each country and region, highlighting each region’s competitive advantages, and rallying regional stakeholders and resources around an excellence-driven vision of their future. It also means strengthening regional innovation systems, maximizing knowledge flows and spreading the benefits of innovation throughout the entire regional economy.
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Social innovation finds its place in a whole range of policy initiatives of the European Commission: examples par excellence are the European platform against poverty and social exclusion, the Innovation Union, the Social Business Initiative, the Employment and Social Investment packages, the Digital Agenda, the new industrial policy, the Innovation Partnership for Active and Healthy Ageing, and the Cohesion Policy. A very good account of how social innovation intertwines with different policy measures and domains may be found in the Guide to Social Innovation published in 2013 by the European Commission. As a matter of fact, social innovators can come from all walks of life and social innovation can take place in public, private and third sector organizations. Not by chance, often the most fruitful sources of new ideas take place in collaborations across sectors. Resulting social innovations can operate at the level of new ideas and pilots, of implementation and scaling, but also at the level of policy making.
Many private organizations operate following this approach, like – inter alia – the English company Make Works, an open directory for sourcing local manufacturing and materials in the T&C realm. Industry 4.0 is a term applied to a group of rapid transformations taking place in the design, manufacture, operation and service of manufacturing systems and products. The term was originated in Germany but the concept largely overlaps developments that, in other European countries, may variously be labelled: Smart Factories, Smart Manufacturing, Industrial Internet of Things, Smart Industry, or Advanced Manufacturing. In recent years, the European Commission launched several policy packages meant to support Industry 4.0 developments. In 2013, the Commission created a Task Force on Advanced Manufacturing for Clean Production and in 2014 a Strategic Policy Forum on Digital Entrepreneurship was established. In addition, the Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs was designed to make ICT education more attractive and better aligned to industry needs. Finally, the Digital Single Market Strategy promises to address data ownership and interoperability in business-to-business and machine-to-machine communications, to encourage standards for digitization in the industrial sector, and to develop digital skills and expertise on the digital transformation of European enterprises. The T&C sector is eager to exploit the opportunities ushered-in by information and communication technologies (e.g., sensors, actuators, virtual & augmented reality, digitization of manufacturing and supply chain, data-driven innovation) and additive manufacturing. The diffusion of this paradigm in the T&C sector is widespread as testified by a cohort of companies in the limelight: Lanieri and Stitch Fix are specialized in data-driven innovation, Tilt Textile is experimenting with augmented reality applied to the textile sector, while Marvelous Designer combines fashion design with computer graphics.
Social Innovation, Circular Economy, Industry 4.0 and Smart Specialization have a common thread running through them: they rely on the collaboration among different actors that interact and jointly develop new solutions, products, services and, sometimes, generate brand-new business endeavors. Collaboration is, indeed, the key principle on which the TCBL project is built: TCBL can, in fact, be described as an ecosystem of ecosystems in the T&C sector which brings together an unprecedented community of innovators and market operators firmly committed to make the industry more sustainable, fair and competitive. At European level there is no shortage of policies focused on this notion: in this respect, worthy of attention is the European Cluster Collaboration Platform (ECCP), a service facility that promotes new partnerships between clusters fostering networking, transnational and international collaborations and cross-sectoral cooperation in order to improve cluster organizations’ performance and increase their competitiveness. Furthermore, it helps clusters to access international markets and lets European cluster organizations profile themselves, exchange experience and search for potential partners for transnational cooperation. In the T&C sector this collaborative attitude among different actors is materialized in several examples: whilst Threadless offers a Web platform on top of which apparel designs are created by – and selected by – an online community, the French initiative Front de Mode (Sakina M’sa) lays the foundation for a sustainable fashion ecosystem that attracts diversified purpose-driven T&C brands. Furthermore, independent designers can take advantage of services made available by companies such as COsewn, which connects designers to a wide range of fashion and sewn product development and production resources (e.g., concept evaluation, prototyping, project management).
EU T&C-related Policies Amid the plethora of European T&C-related policy documents, four of them have been short-listed in view of their relevance for TCBL mission and their alignment with emerging trends illustrated in the present policy brief.
TEXTILE REGULATION (EU) N. 1007/2011 The Textile Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011 on textile fiber names and related labelling and marking of the fiber composition of textile products was adopted in September 2011 and became applicable on 8 May 2012. The directive defines norms related to the fiber composition, determines the fiber names, regulates the presence of non-textile parts of animal origin, and defines an exemption applicable to customized products made by self-employed tailor. Even if this regulation is extremely specific, it touches upon aspects that can be associated to the previously described emerging trends. The “specification of customized products made by self-employed tailors� can be associated to the Smart Specialization trend in which the promotion of local products is particularly encouraged and to the Social Innovation and Circular Economy paradigms where micro-entrepreneurs play an important role.
EU ECO-LABEL FOR TEXTILE PRODUCTS The EU Eco-label seeks to minimize the multifarious environmental impacts at each stage of a product’s life. A number of criteria have been set at levels that promote products characterized by a smaller environmental toll. Moreover, these criteria have also been made available to be used on a voluntary basis by public administrations in the public procurement process: given that public purchases account for 15-20% of the EU GDP, making even a small improvement in terms of sustainability in such a process may contribute to generate substantial environmental impacts. This action is specifically focused on the environmental sustainability of textile products. Circular Economy principles are thus in tune with this purpose. Along these lines, restorative and regenerative practices (e.g., upcycling, downcycling) of circular reuse have what it takes to capture untapped value and accelerate waste reduction.
A Strategic Innovation and Research Agenda for the European Textile and Clothing Industry (ETF) The Strategic Innovation and Research Agenda for the European Textile and Clothing Industry is the most recent (October 2016) T&C-related policy document currently published. It identifies four key innovation themes that will shape T&C industry in the coming future: (1) smart high performance materials; (2) advanced digitized manufacturing, value chains and business models; (3) circular economy and resource efficiency; (4) high value added solutions for attractive growth markets. Two additional themes are discussed as well, namely the need to invest in education and skills, and the importance of supporting and fostering situations of regional excellence in the T&C sector. The strategic agenda makes reference to plenty of the trends identified: the need to focus on local production and to foster regional excellence recall Smart Specialization and cluster Collaboration practices; Circular Economy principles are the core concepts of the innovation theme 3, while innovation theme 2 goes hand in hand with Industry 4.0. Furthermore, the document emphasizes the need for userdriven design and product/service personalization, to some extent under the Social Innovation umbrella.
Textile Clusters for Industrial Modernisation (Tex4IM) The Tex4IM partnership is a sector-specific initiative endorsed by the ECCP. It aims at bringing together the main European textile-based clusters in countries/regions where the T&C industry represents a significant share of the national/regional economy. The resulting alliance works to enhance innovation capacities, business models, knowledge and skill levels and other key competitive factors that will determine the future of European T&C sector. New synergies created are going to extend T&C companies competitiveness at international level, paving also the way for newly conceived textile products capable of carving novel market niches. As the initiative is ultimately meant to build up bridges and to trigger technological and business synergies with other sectors or regions, it goes without saying that it is perfectly aligned with the Collaboration trend. Furthermore, from the environmental standpoint, this initiative bolsters Circular Economy principles while, in terms of innovation approaches, user-driven design (Social Innovation) is backed as game-changer in widening market opportunities.
Policy Highlights T&C companies are increasingly paying attention to user requirements Their focus shifts on consumer-driven design and product development as well as product/ service personalization. In this process, data and ICTs assume a game-changing role as part of a new wave of digitization (e.g., Industry 4.0, AI, AR and VR). the T&C sector has to strengthen local economies and to increase competitiveness Adopting a ‘glocal’ approach, the sector has the chance to promote investments in research and innovation to support SMEs on a regional scale (‘local’) and, at the same time, to maintain and further improve Europe’s position worldwide (‘global’). Skills and training are essentials for knowledge-based competition Ageing workforce, mismatch between traditional education and industry’s needs, brisk pace of technological change and low levels of worker mobility make investments in capacity building no longer a ‘nice to have’ but rather a ‘must have’ for workforce empowerment, talent retention, and territorial competitiveness as well. Collaboration is the linchpin to achieve ‘critical mass’ Collaboration practices should be envisaged not only among T&C enterprises at interregional level but also between the T&C sector and policy makers, private sector partners and other bodies (e.g., research institutions, academia, civil society) as recommended by the ‘quadruple helix’ model. Environmental issues must be turned into an unprecedented breed of opportunities An increased focus on environment allows companies to ‘close the loop’ of product lifecycles through greater recycling, reuse, repair and remix (circular economy), to adopt eco-friendly materials with negligible environmental footprint and to maximize the acquisition of local resources.
Relevant Documents [1] European Commission, “Europe 2020 – A European strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth”, 2010 [2] Joint Research Centre – EC, “Industrial landscape Vision 2025” [3] R. Murray, J. Caulier-Grice and G. Mulgan, “The Open Book of Social Innovation”, The Young Foundation, 2010 [4] European Commission, “Guide to social innovation”, 2013 [5] Ellen MacArthur Foundation, “What is a circular economy?” [6] E. MacArthur, K. Zumwinkel and M. R. Stuchtey, “Growth within: a circular economy vision for a competitive Europe”, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2015 [7] European Commission, “Closing the loop – An EU action plan for the Circular Economy”, 2015 [8] Ellen MacArthur Foundation, “Circular Fibres Initiative”, 2017 [9] European Commission, “Overview of the European commission on digitising Industry”, 2016 [10] European Parliament, “Industry 4.0 – Digitalisation for productivity and growth”, 2015 [11] R. Berger, “Industry 4.0 – The new industrial revolution – how Europe will succeed”, 2016 [12] European Commission, “Guide to Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisations”, 2012 [13] EASME, “European Cluster Collaboration Platform”, 2016 [14] European Union, “Textile Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011”, Official Journal of the European Union, 2011 [15] European Commission, “EU Ecolabel Textiles and footwear” [16] European Technology Platform for the Future of Textiles and Clothing, “Strategic Innovation and Research Agenda for the European Textile and Clothing Industry”, 2016 [17] European Cluster Collaboration Platform, “Textile Clusters for Industrial Modernisation”
Textile and Clothing Business Labs
TCBL is a project co-founded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union Grant Agreement Number 646133
TCBL Project TCBL – as EU-funded project and global movement with responsible innovation in its DNA – supports initiatives and solutions for building a fair and sustainable Textile and Clothing industry in Europe. This passes through the experimentation with innovative business models facilitated by a EU-wide network of Business Labs that provide concrete enabling services to European small and micro-enterprises. All this results into an integrated innovation ecosystem that taps into the significant opportunities usheredin by new digital technologies, emerging production schemes, groundbreaking business models, and valorization of the untapped artisan know-how.
http://tcbl.eu
TCBL Consortium Municipality of Prato German Institutes for Textile and Fiber Research – Center for Management Research Istituto Superiore Mario Boella Skillaware Oxford Brookes University Imec Tavistock Institute Materials Industrial Research & Technology Center S.A. Waag Society Huddersfield & District Textile Training Company Ltd eZavod Consorzio Arca Unioncamere del Veneto Hellenic Clothing Industry Association Sanjotec – Centro Empresarial e Tecnológico Clear Communication Associates Ltd
This policy brief is realized by Innovation Development Area of Istituto Superiore Mario Boella, an applied research center specialized in high impact innovation based on ICTs. www.ismb.it
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