Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

5.29.08 | What does it mean to build a field, catalyze a new industry, or develop a new profession? Philanthropic foundations have been involved in creating new domains of work throughout the last century. The Rockefeller Foundation helped build the U.S. public health system, Ford helped spark new academic departments such as women’s and ethnic studies programs,  and philanthropic support has played a significant role in creating medical subspecialties, such as field of palliative care.

Blueprint Research & Design is working with the MacArthur Foundation to synthesize what is known about field building, contextualize it for the specific challenges of Digital Media and Learning, and deploy that knowledge to best effect. Here is just one example of what we have learned:  Infrastructure matters. The examples above of public health, academic disciplines and medical subspecialties all relied on philanthropic partnerships with institutions that can attract other financial support for the continuation of the work. The infrastructure challenge for the Rockefeller Foundation in building public health was to create academic departments and public systems.

Ninety years later the infrastructure challenge for building Digital Media and Learning is different - it is a question of working across existing institutions in the right ways. The Digital Media and Learning Initiative’s infrastructure challenge is to capitalize both existing institutions and new ones, draw in unaffiliated individuals, and unleash the power of networks, the global nature of ideas, and the dynamic nature of innovation and production across sectors, regions, and cultures. In addition to lessons from prior philanthropic efforts, we are also drawing insights from the history of capital markets, the creation of venture capital as an industry, and breakthroughs in design, the nonprofit sector, media and the science of learning.