Accelerating Ideas that Support Workers!
The Future of Work Accelerator is a 9-month program that will support innovations that advance New Jersey’s workers’ health and safety, improve access to benefits, strengthen training opportunities, and bolster worker voice.
Through the Accelerator, participants will receive custom coaching, curated connections to national experts, introductions to funders and peers, and the opportunity to pilot worker-centric programs and practices in New Jersey.
The Accelerator is open to startups, entrepreneurs, non-profits, public sector institutions and employees, unions, and grassroots organizations from across the globe that are interested in promoting innovative solutions. See a list of themes that the Accelerator will address, below.
Perhaps you’ve developed a digital job coach that helps workers identify the best post-pandemic career opportunities, or a training program that teaches workers at risk of automation how to code, or an idea to build traction around universal basic income. Whether the innovation is technology-based or not, the Accelerator can help take it to the next level.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the economic insecurity of thousands of families, especially those in low-income communities and communities of color. At the same time, entrepreneurs, innovators, and policymakers created long-term support solutions for the most vulnerable workers.
The FOW Accelerator will focus on innovations that address the following themes:
- Improving employment opportunities for workers via lifelong learning and re-skilling initiatives, improved career and/or training guidance, or other learning and training innovations.
- Offering greater economic security and resilience through financial innovations like portable benefits solutions, crowdfunding initiatives, etc.
- Strengthening worker voice, ownership, and power.
- Enhancing employer practices ( e.g., workplace safety innovations, hazard pay, portable benefits)
- Improving job opportunities, inclusion, and financial support systems for disadvantaged groups/demographics (e.g. day laborers, immigrants, the elderly, rural workers, misclassified workers in the gig economy, minorities, etc.)
We strongly encourage applications from people of all backgrounds (local geographies, women, persons of color, low-income communities, young people, LGBTQ+, those who are disabled) and especially from those with lived experience at the forefront of the future of work.
We welcome applicants with ideas in all stages of development, from early-stage ideas to ventures in need of scaling. We also support “intrapreneurs” that are trying to advance ideas or innovations within established organizations. Applicants can be from the public or private sector, or from the non-profit community.
Additionally, we encourage organizations looking to scale (or localize) in New Jersey from other regions to apply. We hope to use this competition to help root innovative ideas in New Jersey, and can support scaling by organizations based elsewhere as long as there is a strong commitment to designing a fairer economy and positively impacting the lives of New Jerseyans.
Illustrative Examples
Accelerator cohort Announced
Learn more about the 20 innovators that have been selected to participate in the Future of Work Accelerator.
Questions regarding the FOW Accelerator or the application process itself can be submitted via email to fow.accelerator@innovation.nj.gov. All questions and responses will be posted publicly on the Your Questions page, and be available to be viewed by all potential participants.