Could an Idea for Fighting Poverty Be Worth a Billion Dollars?
“Like all good journalists, I adhere to a maxim: Follow the money. When I heard that the innovation arm of the nonprofit group Jobs for the Future was announcing the winners of its $1 Billion Wage Gain Challenge at the summit in San Diego last week, I figured I had found the motherlode. I had. But that wasn’t because I stumbled upon some new Silicon Valley ‘unicorn’ ed-tech company suddenly valued at a billion dollars. It was a find because the contest gave me a chance to better understand the two winners’ approaches to helping at least 100,000 people in poverty get the education they need to raise their incomes by $10,000 or more by 2021. (That’s the essence of the challenge, which was supported by Schmidt Futures.)”