NESTA's research team have just completed a review of the UK early stage Venture Industry
Welcome to my new Investments blog. I'll be sharing insights with you about growth companies, early stage investments and the wider entrepreneurial and venture industry
Last Thursday, I had the opportunity to speak to 150 arts teachers, ICT heads, administrators and a handful of industry specialists at the AQA Creative Education Conference in Birmingham, UK.
The education team here at Nesta believe that children are inherent makers who "bake" pies with mud, share stories with their invisible (and visible) friends, create YouTube videos of their friends dancing to popular songs, and have mastered manipulating tablets and touch screens to draw.
In response to last week's post, @Carloper posed some great questions: what "mastery" are we measuring? If kids are learning in a more open environment, why do we insist on assessing them in a closed, traditional way?
In my first official teaching job I was a swimming teacher for kids aged 4-12 at a summer program in Japan. Terms like 'classroom management', 'student-centered learning' and 'collaborative learning' did not exist in my vocabulary, and 'flipping the class' meant doing somersaults underwater.
The challenge of an ageing society could be the most critical long-term issue facing public services over the next few decades.
Why radical innovation is needed to reinvent public services for the recession and beyond.
There has been an overwhelming response to my last blog post about Nesta's Randomised Coffee Trials, with responses received from various countries, UK government bodies, multilateral organisations, academics, NGOs, small companies and multinational companies.
Inspired by Pedro Medina's discussion of serendipity*, Nesta's Randomised Coffee Trials (RCT) initiative responds to Pedro's dual challenge of appreciating the benefits of serendipity and the need to 'build new fishing systems**.
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