JFFLabs Immersive Learning Impact Accelerator
JFFLabs works with entrepreneurs and growth-stage companies to accelerate and scale technology-based workforce and educational innovations.
Today’s advances in immersive technologies create new opportunities for companies as well as education and training providers to build engaging, effective, and affordable systems to train talent through simulated environments.
At JFFLabs, we scan markets and work with mission-aligned entrepreneurs and growth-stage companies to accelerate and scale technology-based solutions that are poised for significant social impact and are aligned to important innovations, such as immersive technology. The offerings of growth-stage immersive learning companies range from mobile apps used in traditional classroom settings to alternative learning solutions delivered in a variety of formats, including through employers and via personalized, self-paced systems.
We partnered with Walmart to scan the market, identify great immersive solutions, and work directly with companies that are poised for impact. These companies demonstrated product/market fit and have the ability to deliver meaningful social impact as their businesses grow. Working across JFF and JFFLabs, our Impact Accelerator aligns social impact with the needs of business, education, and workforce systems.
View the Market Scan
2020 Immersive Learning Technology
Partners
Meet the Companies

Floreo
VR

Floreo
VR
Floreo harnesses the power of virtual reality to offer a supplementary method of helping people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) learn social and communication skills. The company has a growing library of science-based lessons, and its technology gives supervising adults a way to track learners’ progress. Schools, therapy practices, and parents use Floreo’s tools.
Floreo aims to be the leading platform for the development of learning content for people with developmental delays. Floreo’s mission is not just to create innovative tools, but also to work with researchers, educators, and therapists to demonstrate that its tools positively impact the lives of people with ASD.
Floreo has driven groundbreaking research on autism and VR. The company’s first research study, which focused on improving eye contact, was published in JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting and won the Node.Health award for top evidence-based pilot in 2017. At Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Floreo research supported by a National Institutes of Health grant has yielded a half-dozen papers and academic presentations.

Interplay Learning
VR

Interplay Learning
VR
Interplay Learning offers an online skilled trades training platform called SkillMill that features a catalog of on-demand video-based lessons, 3D simulations, and VR-enabled training scenarios. The company offers both off-the-shelf and highly scalable custom solutions to solve workforce training challenges. More than 75,000 people have used Interplay systems to learn new skills.
Interplay’s main objective is to offer a new and better path to skill development, employment, and career advancement for the hands-on workforce and thereby strengthen the talent pipeline for the 40 million U.S. jobs that require training in the trades.

Mursion
VR

Mursion
VR
Drawing upon research in learning science, artificial intelligence, and psychology, Mursion harnesses both technology and human interaction to provide training in essential frontline workplace skills. The company’s immersive VR sessions are powered by artificial intelligence but also feature live human interaction. With trained professionals orchestrating interactions between learners and digital avatars, Mursion simulations achieve a realism that helps deliver measurable high-impact results.
Mursion’s goal is to provide a scalable way to help people develop the skills that make us uniquely human, and to be recognized in a wide range of industries as the provider of the premier experiential reality platform for improving and assessing social effectiveness. It is making progress toward that goal: After starting out in the education market, the company now has nearly 200 customers representing nearly every major economic sector.

Talespin
XR

Talespin
XR
Talespin helps organizations and workers prepare for the future of work and thrive in the face of relentless technological advances by providing tools that transform the way we transfer knowledge, reduce the time we need to learn, and help us develop the communication and collaboration skills that machines cannot compete with.
Talespin is a developer of an enterprise extended reality (XR) platform called Runway that, among other things, supports virtual reality training modules, augmented reality performance support tools, and advanced workforce analytics. Runway currently features two core VR training products: Talespin Propel, for teaching object- and process-oriented tasks, and Talespin CoPilot, which uses virtual role-playing exercises to help people develop leadership and communication skills. Talespin’s platform accelerates employee learning, increases engagement, improves training satisfaction, increases decision making accuracy, and reduces training costs.

The value is clear: Immersive learning tools help companies, educators, and training providers prepare people better, faster, and more efficiently.
But the impact doesn’t have to stop at the bottom line. These technologies can make training accessible to a wider range of workers and ultimately increase the diversity of the workforce and open up new opportunities for advancement by enabling people to adapt and develop their skills quickly.
2020 Immersive Learning Technology | Market Scan
This market scan identifies the most promising immersive learning technologies that are poised to generate significant social impact.
Andy Trainor, vice president, Walmart US LearningWe’re excited to support the work of JFFLabs to bring immersive learning and work-based learning to the retail industry and beyond.
