European Community of Practice

Workshop 2: Mainstreaming innovative solutions  

We started with hearing people's expecations for these workshops. The expectations were to hear about different approaches to innovation and mainstreaming, to pick up ideas, to present a tool and to network and find out about CoPs. We heard from:

• Christian Vaske in Estonia, about getting compulsive gamblers back into the workforce and mainstreaming this process into legislation.
• Margo Kerkhof in the Netherlands where they produced a manual for mainstreaming: "Selling innovation".
• Fernanda Mora in France where they produced a self e-learning mainstreaming kit.

The reflections and inspirations to come from the following discussions were:

• There are lots of ideas around that can be adapted and used in ones own context. The question is how to keep up this circulation of ideas?
• Sharing ideas creates the sharing of ideas.
• Tools or processes on their own are not enough. You also need persistance and enthusiasm.
• Publishing information or providing decision-makers with results is not enough. You have to connect decision-makers and provide opportunities for them to come together to solve their problems.
• Mainstreaming should be part of the initial plan.
• Managing Authority websites should have links to the CoPs to give them greater visibility.