Cromwell's new gig long in the works

Former state official's new venture was gestating well before he left office -- and tracks with state economic assessment that has not been fully disclosed

Email | Print By Milt Capps

Former State Economic and Community Development Director for Technology Eric Cromwell, whose state gig ended March 16, has revealed the outlines of his new educational-technology venture, which was apparently in the works nearly a year before he left state service.

Responding to a NashvillePost.com query, Cromwell declined late yesterday to provide details of his new business, saying he's currently in "stealth mode."

Cromwell apparently plans to conduct business as LearningTopia LLC, and his venture seems designed to offer both free content contributed by the user-community, as well as commercial content that would be sold to support education and training.

Research indicates the LearningTopia.com domain name was registered June 20, 2006, suggesting Cromwell had been preparing the company's launch for at least nine months.

A LearningTopia webpage that is not currently retrievable live was cached as an image by Google on Jan. 26. The text on that page describes the venture as "an Internet services company that capitalizes on the efficient capabilities of the World Wide Web to deliver learning to everyone. The company's innovative business model will revolutionize the way training and education content is produced and consumed — anytime, anywhere, any device.

"LearningTopia," the text continues, "provides a technology platform designed to provide the missing, yet essential component required to realize the vast potential of e-learning. Producers and consumers of digital learning content can for the first time contribute to a comprehensive learning ecosystem that leads to greater knowledge sharing, learning, worker productivity and increased profitability."

Cromwell-as-entrepreneur has chosen an industry — online teaching and learning for "lifelong learning" — that was not among the strategic opportunities he identified for innovators in the Nashville region, when he spoke publicly on the subject in May last year, just five weeks before his domain name was registered.

During a May 17 address to the Nashville Technology Council, Cromwell and co-presenter Dan Marcum, chairman of the Tennessee Technology Development Corporation, suggested Middle Tennessee could become a "national hub" for "health management, Health IT [information technologies], Digital Media, DRM [Digital Rights Management, and] Drug Discovery."

"Learning Technologies" was, however, cited as a target for entrepreneurs in the Memphis area. Prior to joining ECD, Cromwell was an executive with the FedEx Institute at the University of Memphis.

Until recently, Cromwell was widely believed to be the leading candidate to become director of "Innovation Tennessee", a state program that he had helped design and develop. Both Marcum and ECD Commissioner Matt Kisber have previously each expressed great confidence in Cromwell as a possible leader of the Innovation initiative. The evaporation of that scenario has never been publicly explained.

LearningTopia was registered with the Tennessee Secretary of State in December, and records on file there show Craig Grossman, a Germantown attorney, as agent for the firm. Grossman is also a member of the board of directors of Luminetx Corp. and Snowflake Technologies, a Luminetx subsidiary, which were founded by Jim Phillips. Phillips was also the founding Chairman and CEO of the University of Memphis' FedEx Institute. Cromwell worked for Phillips at the FedEx Institute, until Cromwell's appointment to ECD. Grossman served as interim executive director of the FedEx Institute for about 15 months during 2005-2006.

Earlier this week, NashvillePost.com requested detailed information from Economic and Community Development regarding a range of economic-development issues, including strategic planning undertaken during the past few years. ECD's response to the request for these documents has not yet been received. Much of the ECD planning work was done by contractor New Economy Strategies of Washington, D.C., under a contract with Marcum's TTDC and partly in collaboration with Cromwell. Details of New Economy's findings have not been publicly released.