Amid the recent economic crisis, the digital economy has not faltered or failed to deliver. Rather, it has continued to deliver new business opportunities, open markets and create jobs with promising potential to multiply this in both developing and developed markets. This workshop explores how multistakeholder practices can be efficient mechanisms for addressing challenges that are hindering the full realization of these potentials. Some of the challenges include the financial and regulatory risks in starting up new businesses or creating new infrastructures; appropriate skills development practices and infrastructures to address the availability of skills necessary for creating, consuming, and maintaining these new services; existence of network externalities and barriers to trade; institutional linkages to higher education, research and business. The aim of this workshop is to bring together representatives from international organizations, the private sector, academia, government and civil society to address the employment and skills challenges raised by the digital economy, and to assess the role that multistakeholder cooperation could play in implementing the policies required to facilitate the structural and social adjustment necessary for sustainable development. Examples of best practices and shortcomings will be analysed, along with potential new approaches. Workforce mobility and related changes in labour law, increasing labour market participation of women, youth, and the underserved, needs for innovative educational initiatives, challenges to workforce in the age of new technologies and identification of resources to support these transformations, call for new solutions that could benefit tremendously from multistakeholder practices.
