Education Innovation Forum and Expo:
Leveraging i3 to Drive an Innovation Culture

The Aspen Institute’s national innovation and investor’s forum, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Education, will convene leading innovators and some of our nation’s most resourceful public and private sector leaders to address the most intractable challenges facing American education.  By connecting creative educational thinkers with those with the potential to support or implement solutions, the event will capitalize on the momentum created by the tremendous response to the Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) to ignite a broader national conversation on creating and sustaining an innovation culture in public education. 

The event will also begin a much needed national dialogue on how to more effectively attract private equity investment to the education space and about creating a more innovation friendly policy environment.  Partnerships fostered by this gathering and follow up activities have the potential to drive sustainable and scalable solutions for some of education’s most vexing questions.

The national forum will take place January 20-21, 2011 in Washington, DC as educational performance and its effect on our economy and global competitiveness takes center stage as a critical bipartisan national issue.  The convergence of early results from states in implementing reforms with the five billion dollars invested in the “Race to the Top” competition and i3 with the continuing national education reform debate driven by ESEA reauthorization will create a unique opportunity for engaging opinion leaders from all sectors on our nation’s critical education and competitiveness challenges.

Key objectives for the Forum include:

• Create a national platform to feature investment ready non-profit and for profit K-12 innovations
• Showcase i3 projects and promising ventures that ED could not fund
• Attract more private equity investment to education innovations
• Foster an education policy environment that is more innovation and investment friendly
• Engage thought leaders from multiple sectors in creating a dynamic education innovation and R&D infrastructure
• Create an enduring platform for connecting innovators with, venture capitalists, social innovation investors, educators and policymakers

Agenda topics will focus on innovation challenges and opportunities for educators, system leaders, entrepreneurs, and philanthropic and return-focused investors.  Discussions will include new models of capital formation – what can be learned from other sectors; opportunities for partnership among philanthropic and for-profit investors; innovation and disruption in education technology and delivery; overcoming scaling challenges;  transitions and opportunities for large scale players; perspectives of leading investors (philanthropic, VC, PE, institutional) on the education policy and regulatory environment; the new role of evidence in education products and programs; impact of the economy on innovation challenges and opportunities; building an education research and development infrastructure and others.

In addition to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, featured speakers and attendees will include educational innovators, practitioners and researchers; corporate leaders; venture capital and private equity investors; social capital investors; foundations; technology entrepreneurs; opinion leaders; national policymakers from both sides of the political aisle and other leaders representing multiple sectors.

The event will also feature a large interactive Expo to showcase promising applicants from the i3 pool that the U.S. Department of Education could not fund as well as other leading non-profit and for-profit ventures – as many as one hundred of the nation’s most compelling education innovations/innovators. 

To create opportunities for productive interactions between leading innovators and potential for-profit investors, the Aspen Institute will partner with Investor’s Circle and Startl to produce a venture fair.  The partners will conduct a national outreach, nomination and review process that will produce twenty investment-ready innovative education deals to be featured at the Fair.  Prior to the event, the most highly rated among those will be given the opportunity to make a presentation on their project to a select group of investors live. 

Special tracks and select programs within the Forum will address issues of particular importance to investors such as the role various types of capital (public, private, philanthropic) can play in helping innovative solutions succeed.  Established investors who are new to the education space will have an opportunity to learn about the market.  Cross-pollination will be prioritized so that policy makers can see some of the innovative companies that are out there, and investors can learn about government initiatives that have created innovation and market opportunities.