Ideas

Some industries have major opportunities, but from a worker’s perspective they can still feel opaque, fragmented or hard to enter. Especially if they are new or emerging. This tool evaluates how clear an industry is for workers by assessing barriers to entry, visibility into roles and pathways, and how easy it is to understand the steps needed to get started.

A playful tool in an unsettling time. As AI reshapes the labor market, many workers have little clarity about whether their role is vulnerable or what to do next. This interactive tool uses the most up to date labor market data and research and helps individuals assess career risk and identify adjacent pathways to explore.

A dual-sided credential verification tool. Inspired by the way employment verification works — a worker submits a credential claim, it gets routed to the training provider for verification, and once both sides confirm, a permanent shareable credential record is created. The worker owns a URL they can share with employers. The credential gets saved into the system for easier verification in the future.

EDOs land great deals with orgs and then they have to meticulously track activities like a forensic accountant to disperse incentives. EDO Incentive Magician is a compliance tracking tool that automatically calculates what an economic development incentive recipient owes, what's been paid, and what's left. It avoids PII data issues, pulls everything into a clear dashboard people can plan from, and retires the need for mega spreadsheets and hundreds of hours of work. Gives time back for the white-glove magic they do, reduces audit risk, speeds up approvals, and creates a real time record of how public dollars are performing for a region.

A tool for training providers to create a practical handoff guide for each graduate: documenting the skills and competencies they leave training with, and equipping workers with evidence-based questions to ask prospective employers about onboarding, mentorship, milestones, and other early-career supports linked to stronger first-year success.

An empathetic pulse survey to understand the biggest challenges training providers are facing in 2026–2027, with a focus on enrollment, completion, job placement, and the changing expectations shaping how programs work.

A tool that helps training providers quickly assess how well their curriculum aligns with real local job opportunities and where small adjustments could improve that alignment. A provider uploads or pastes a job posting, and the tool: - Identifies the competencies a candidate would need to demonstrate to be competitive for the role, with emphasis on competencies that could reasonably be taught or reinforced in a training program. - Translates employer language into a consistent skills framework, including Durable Skills and relevant O*NET knowledge, skills, abilities, and work activities. - Flags requirements that may be weaker indicators for actual job performance, helping providers distinguish between asks. - Generates a menu of performance tasks providers could use to teach, practice, or assess one or more of the identified competencies. - Produces an editable prompt providers can take into their preferred LLM to adapt the analysis into lesson plans, assessments, projects, or other curriculum materials. The goal is not to redesign a program around every individual job posting. It is to give providers a fast, practical way to use local employer demand as an input into ongoing curriculum improvement

"A tool that would enable a worker currently making $55k/year and seeking to make $70k enter their education level, experience, languages, physical mobility, etc. to see pathway possibilities specific to their geo with associated costs, specific training programs and timeline."