The Keystone Venture Lab will connect Idea Loom projects with mentorship, market understanding and venture development
Hyderabad (Telangana) [India], October 10: Keystone School and AIC ISB have entered into a collaboration to help high school students develop promising ideas into solutions that can be tested and implemented in the real world.
The Memorandum of Understanding was formally exchanged at ISB Hyderabad by Srilakshmi Reddy, Founder and Director, Keystone Education Group, and Isha Handa, Chief Executive Officer, AIC ISB.
The partnership connects Keystone’s Idea Loom learning model with AIC ISB’s experience in entrepreneurship, mentorship and venture development.
The first programme under the partnership is the Keystone Venture Lab, which will support selected students pursuing Cambridge International AS & A Level and the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP). Building on their Idea Loom passion projects, students will receive guidance from mentors and industry practitioners to understand users and markets, test their assumptions, refine their ideas and explore how promising projects can be taken forward beyond school.
The programme will give students the time and support to investigate meaningful problems, develop appropriate solutions and build practical plans for taking their work forward.
“As one of the most innovative schools in the country, Keystone believes that students’ ideas, developed through our Idea-Loom learning framework by working with communities to solve real problems, should go beyond prototypes. Our collaboration with AIC ISB will help students test and refine these ideas and take them towards real implementation,” said Srilakshmi Reddy, Founder & Director, Keystone Education Group.
Idea Loom has evolved through more than a decade of work at Keystone. Students begin with problems they observe in communities and everyday life. They speak to the people affected, conduct research, build early versions and improve their work based on feedback.
More than 2,000 students have participated in Idea Loom over the past decade, working on over 200 community-rooted projects in areas such as agriculture, accessibility, food systems, health, mobility and local livelihoods. The programme has also resulted in hundreds of student prototypes.
“Students often have strong ideas, but they need the right questions, experienced mentors and sustained guidance to develop them further. Through the Keystone Venture Lab, we hope to help students understand users and markets, test their solutions and make informed decisions about what to build next. The larger purpose is to help them become thoughtful and responsible problem solvers,” said Isha Handa, Chief Executive Officer, AIC ISB.
The Venture Lab will become part of the wider support system that Keystone has built around Idea Loom.
Students begin by choosing a problem that matters to them. They then research the issue, speak to users and define what they want to create. As the work progresses, they build a prototype or conduct an investigation, collect feedback and make improvements. Projects that are ready for the next stage can receive further support through mentorship, internships and Keystone’s advanced innovation programmes.
Keystone also helps high school students gain professional exposure through internships, field immersions, conversations with experts and interactions with industry. These experiences introduce students to workplace discipline, technical feasibility and the responsibility of developing something for real users.
The Keystone Venture Lab will add venture development to this journey. Students will be introduced to customer discovery, market research, value propositions, business models, solution testing and communication. They will also learn how to plan the next stage of their projects.
The partnership is intended to help students make better decisions about their ideas. Some projects may move towards a pilot or wider implementation. Others may change direction after user or market research. In both cases, students will learn to use evidence, accept feedback and improve their work.
For Keystone, the collaboration advances a simple educational goal: students should have opportunities to take meaningful work beyond the classroom and understand what it takes to create something that people can use.
For more information, visit: https://www.keystoneeducation.in/