Acceleration as an Educational Model
In the ten years since those programs launched, I estimate accelerators have grown to number almost 10,000 worldwide (after numbering only 9 across the globe in 2009). As they’ve grown in adoption, they’ve also begun to show they are capable of broader impact that no one has thought possible.
- Accelerators don’t need startups, tech, investors, or the internet. The essential model of an accelerator requires a cohort of participants, a curriculum, and a network of individuals and organizations that contribute to the accelerator’s area of focus.
- Almost any accelerator in any startup community has the above elements — but the things that make accelerators work can work in any industry.
2. Everyone can (and may) experience an accelerator as part of their education in the new economy. Accelerators will find amplifying importance in connecting industry participants with relevant updates and redirections to their education.
- The model has additionally found incredible adoption within universities, adult education spaces, and other legacy settings.
As knowledge in general generates and decays at increasing frequencies in the new economy (remember: JavaScript was created in 10 days and is now among the most adopted coding languages in the world), skill circulation will become increasingly social, increasingly informal, and increasingly function (not strategy) oriented.
And the accelerator model is showing may be the best structure for harnessing the changes of the new economy as opportunities — not challenges.
