Don Dodge offers daily comments about business start-ups. Today he describes venture capitalists (VCs) in a comparison of the digital boom bubble burst with the Web Boom 2.0 bubble burst. His thinking appears to parallel the kind of thinking used by venture educators (VEs) working with mobile PCs in schools and in home schooling.
It is the professional VCs who get hurt when these (start-up investment) companies fail. The VCs expect failures and moderate their investments accordingly. They will make lots of small gambles (first round) and only “double down” on the good ones in a second round investment. The VCs have always known that one or two winners pays for the other 5 or 6 losers and leaves lots of profit.
In over 100 schools worldwide educators have ventured into using Tablet PCs and Ultra Mobile PCs during instruction and learning assignments. They develop and try out procedures for others to watch and maybe imitate in the future. Like VCs, VEs take the small gambles, risking their careers as well as the learning rates of their students to test the utility of these tools in schools.
VEs don’t have formal schooling or professional preparation comparable to VCs. Dodge offers useful insights for VEs to consider. Many of the logic patterns he reviews, VCs learn in business school and through trial and error. Some patterns they adapt and create. Others they create on-the-fly.
When a VE fails, theoretically students might pay a price. But in practice, the novelty of the VE’s efforts usually appear to help students more than regular curricula and instruction. I don’t have objective data to support that hypothesis. Many observations in a wide variety of settings seem like a fair basis for this generalization until it’s tested empirically.
In any case, I appreciate Dodge’s comments. He is a veteran of five start-ups, including Forte Software, AltaVista, Napster, Bowstreet, and Groove Networks. Don is currently Director of Business Development for Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team. The team’s goal is to help VC’s and start-ups be successful with Microsoft, and together, provide great products for our customers.
Hmm, seems like educators could use a robust support group like Microsoft offers start-up businesses. Maybe we should call it Education’s Emerging Learning Team. If traditions for innovations in schooling continue as they did in the 20th century, maybe research universities will take the lead in preparing VEs as business schools contribute to development of VCs.
By Bob Heiny