US-based education services company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) has launched* a $100m corporate venturing fund for new products to accelerate technology development.
The HMH Innovation Fund will also look to support new consumer applications, including gaming platforms and other interactive solutions to engage students outside the classroom.
Barry O’Callaghan, chief executive of HMH, said: "The HMH Innovation Fund is providing the capital to identify and incubate the next generation of innovation in education."
Next year, HMH will extend the Innovation Fund with its HMH Innovation Challenge for ideas from individuals, businesses and not-for-profits that address teaching and learning.
HMH is also investing up to $300m over the next three years to develop innovation centres both in the US and Ireland, alongside third parties, including original equipment manufacturers, foundations and academia.
The first projects include a one-year pilot program in four California school districts of the first full-curriculum algebra application on the Apple iPad; and an all-digital language arts program in Texas for grades 2-12 called Texas Write Source.
Fiona O’Carroll, executive vice president of New Ventures at HMH, said: "We have created an environment and a structure to foster and support incubation of new ideas and we feel we can be the partner of choice for big ideas due to our overall scale, market reach, positional advantage and speed in bringing things to market. This is a true incubation model."
(*Editor: This release came out last month but I missed it at the time. Apologies.)