An Expanding Learning Economy
The knowledge economy and a growing consumer value on personal growth drive a diverse market for educational and learning experiences ranging from food, toys, and games to housing and travel.

At the very top of the map, a final story centers on An Expanded Learning Economy. This emerges from the intersection of core trend: Grassroots Economics and all the impact areas. An Expanding Learning Economy reflects the increasing consumer and community value on learning as a benefit and as a currency of exchange. The learning economy includes all the formal and informal forms of creating and exchanging learning benefits. This includes formal market products and services like the growing educational services, tutoring, and instructional toy markets, but also includes new products and services like food, furniture, travel and recreation. Players who once were not considered part of the education market now offer concrete benefits that are evaluated alongside the formal school system, including private schools. The learning economy presents more choice for where and how to get meaningful learning experiences. Public schools are, and will continue to be, a part of the learning economy. The challenge is to identify innovative ways to create relationships among the various players in the expanding learning economy. The emergence of community value networks that map the flow of tangible and intangible sources of value in the learning economy will improve relationships and reveal new sources of value and benefit from the public education system. Innovative communities, like the eLearning city in Espoo, Finland, will treat their educational resources as an urban learning commons—a shared, critical resource that requires collective management to avoid abuse and deterioration. The market values learning Learning becomes a key customer filter that shapes decisions in the market across income categories, expanding markets adjacent to public education. Leveraging networking tools, open knowledge repositories, and peer-to-peer production methods (rather than hierarchical production systems), learners and educators will increasingly experiment with sharing and exchanging learning resources across market boundaries growing a more integrated learning economy. Models for organizing learning experiences over time will diversify and extend beyond those found today in private, parochial, home schooling, and charter schools. Public schools become hubs in value networks Lower network-coordination costs make it cost-effective to meet the needs and desires of “long-tail” niche markets in industries as diverse as music, health, and education. Numerous and diverse niche markets of learners become targets for all sorts of providers of learning experiences in the expanding learning economy (public, private, parochial, charter, home and other informal schools, and commercially based providers). Value network mapping becomes an important tool for tracking the exchange of tangible and intangible learning assets that flow between public schools and the rest of the learning economy. These exchanges create richer relationships between public schools and the community.

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