During the 29th edition of Bett Brasil, Latin America’s largest event for innovation and technology in education, the Startups Arena hosted the international panel “A Perspective on Innovation and Startups, ” moderated by Léo Gmeiner, CBO and co-founder of School Guardian and a member of the advisory board of the Asociación Ibero-Americana de EdTechs, and featuring discussions by Peter Doyle of the United Kingdom, a policy analyst at the British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA); and Fernando Valenzuela of Mexico, CEO of the Edlatam Alliance and a member of the advisory board of the Asociación Ibero-Americana de EdTechs.

Doyle discussed how the association supports schools in their administrative and financial management through data and provided an overview of the UK’s fiscal environment. BESA, with 90 years of experience, serves approximately 400 clients in the UK alone, including Oxford University Press and Assessment, Pearson, and TTS, and has total revenue of nearly $2.2 billion.

Valenzuela, meanwhile, was the first Latin American to win the Global Visionary Award in 2022 from Etech Digest in the United States for his collaborative work with the community. “Collaboration happens when you stop thinking of another institution or company as a competitor,” he emphasized.

The executive, who began working with EdTech companies in 2009, described how difficult it was to grow and succeed in a market that, in 2010, saw investment revenue of just half a million dollars worldwide.

Education and the Digital Age

Valenzuela raised key issues regarding education and technology, emphasizing that competition in the sector is meaningless when it comes to innovations aimed at the education market.

“That company, which could be seen as a competitor, is also tackling problems in education. The challenge is much greater when all the competitors combined are unable to solve the problems in education,” he said.

According to him, for this transformation in education to take place, we need to look from the outside in. “Education is the same; the people are the same—the teachers, the students, the regulations, and the technology are all the same. All the challenges we face here also exist in Finland, Singapore, and Germany. Ultimately, no one is prepared for the digital evolution we’re experiencing. What we need to do is not teach with technology, but teach for the digital world—and that changes everything, because no one was prepared.”

Valenzuela, who, along with Léo Gmeiner, is a member of Future Hacker—a global artificial intelligence network that includes experts in education, technology, and capital—noted that education needs to be integrated into many other sectors to achieve greater development.

“We’re looking beyond education, at sectors such as entertainment, gaming, social media, fashion, food, hospitality, and so on. I conducted a study last year comparing the number of social media activities related to education, and I found that 5% of what happens on social media is about education, while 15% is in the gaming sector,” said Valenzuela.

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