Keep your school.
Get the head office.
Innovation Advantage Schools™ gives you the head office a franchise would — without taking your name, your license or a share of your revenue.
Independent shouldn't mean alone.
What is Innovation Advantage Schools™?
Innovation Advantage Schools™ is a membership network that empowers early childhood education providers to stand out in a competitive market through a differentiated curriculum, innovative educational resources, and ongoing professional development.
What members get
Members gain access to the proprietary Innovation Advantage™ curriculum, practical tools to enhance the learning experience, and professional development opportunities that strengthen teaching practices and school leadership.
Our mission
To help schools differentiate their programs, empower their educators, elevate the quality of early childhood education, and build a competitive advantage in their local markets.
Your name
on the building, the sign and the agreement.
Your ownership
your leadership, your enrollment systems, your revenue.
Flat dues
per site, banded by licensed capacity. No royalty.
Membership enquiries: marnie@innovationadvantagegroup.com
01 · The problem
Independent schools don't have departments.
A national brand runs on departments — curriculum, training, quality, enrollment, operations. An independent school runs on whoever happens to be in the building. When a director leaves, the system leaves with them.
02 · The answer
Innovation Advantage gives them shared infrastructure.
Membership gives your school the departments a national brand runs on — while the school stays yours. Keep the name on the building. Get the head office behind it.
Teach ✦ Develop ✦ See ✦ Differentiate ✦ Operate
Who we are
Built from experience on every side of the business.
After operating independently, starting a franchise system, working as a franchisee, building a multi-site organization and seeing how larger operators divide the work across specialized departments, we built Innovation Advantage around one question: What if independent schools could access that infrastructure without giving up their independence?
Marnie Forestieri — Founder, Innovation Advantage Schools™
20+ schools built · Author of 13 books · TEDx speaker
03 · The Framework
The Childcare Operating System.
How Innovation Advantage Schools™ Helps
Through our proprietary Innovation Advantage™ curriculum, professional development, implementation resources, and practical operating tools, we help independent schools strengthen these interconnected systems.
Our goal is to help owners move beyond managing daily problems and build an organization that operates with greater consistency, accountability, and confidence.
Because a strong school should be supported by systems—not dependent on one exceptional owner or director.
04 · The system
Your head office has five departments.
Teach ✦ Develop ✦ See ✦ Differentiate ✦ Operate
Teach
01Curriculum as a differentiator.
Our curriculum is more than what we teach — it is what sets us apart and brings our community together. Innovation Advantage™ gives children opportunities to problem-solve, collaborate, create, test ideas, and communicate their thinking.
- Ready on day one: A full year of CAPE lessons inside the platform. Each runs about 30 minutes, with every step, material and teacher prompt written out.
- An add-on, not a replacement: Keep your curriculum. Teachers add ready CAPE lessons alongside what they use today.
Parents are looking for future-ready education, and our curriculum gives us a powerful story to share during tours:
“We’re not only preparing children for their next classroom. We’re developing the creativity, confidence, collaboration, and problem-solving skills they’ll need for their future.”
That is our differentiator — and a powerful enrollment message.
Unit planning: one CAPE unit, planned step by step.
The departments are the difference, not the brand.
05 · The method
The CAPE Method™
The method is the belief that brings us together.
Keep your curriculum. Add a repeatable way to move children from curiosity to thinking, creating and reflection. Every CAPE lesson follows the same four-step structure. See a full lesson, start to finish →
Challenge
Give children a real problem worth solving.
Analyze
Look closely. Sort, test, compare, notice.
Produce
Build something. Make the thinking visible.
Evaluate
Did it work? What would you change?
Four steps, every lesson. A first-year teacher can deliver it on day one; a twenty-year veteran goes deeper inside the same structure. Children analyze by sorting and testing, not by filling in a worksheet. They produce by building. The method names what four-year-olds already do, so a teacher can plan for it and a leader can coach it.
06 · The proof
Tested at The Winter Park School.
The system isn't a theory. It runs every day in our own lab school — the same lessons, the same observation tools, the same platform a member school receives.
Delivered daily
CAPE lessons are taught in real classrooms every morning, by teachers with the same constraints yours have.
Observed and measured
Implementation is tracked with the same observation and tracking tools member leaders use.
Revised before it ships
Anything that doesn't work in a real room is fixed before it ever reaches your platform.
07 · The identity
One mark on the door. Two audiences.
Member schools display An Innovation Advantage School™ at the entrance, on the website and in the email signature. It is the shortest way to say what a school teaches and how.
AN INNOVATION ADVANTAGE SCHOOL™
CAPE
✦ THE CAPE METHOD ✦
Challenge · Analyze · Produce · Evaluate
The four letters are the lesson structure running in every classroom behind the door. Parents see them on the wall displays; teachers plan from them; leaders coach against them. The mark is the same object pointing three different ways.
Artwork illustrative — final badge files are issued to member schools.
What it tells a parent
This school teaches a named method, not a theme calendar.
- ✦There is a structure behind the projects on the wall, and someone can explain it.
- ✦Their child's work is documented over time, not sent home as a folder of crafts.
- ✦The school has committed to a shared instructional method, implementation standards and ongoing professional development.
What it gives the provider
A tour answer that doesn't depend on who is giving the tour.
- ✦A recognizable philosophy, with parent handouts and talking points behind it.
- ✦A difference a family can repeat to a spouse, which price and location can't match.
- ✦Your own name stays on the sign. The badge sits beside it, not over it.
What the badge is not. It is not an accreditation or a rating. It means a school is a member of the network, licensed to teach The CAPE Method™ and running on the platform.
08 · The offer
Founding School Membership.
A limited number of founding schools, before general enrollment opens — built for the people who run the system.
Single-site owners
Compete with the national brands without becoming one.
Multi-site operators
One standard in every location. One language across every director.
Networks and agencies
One early learning model across many providers, with implementation support.
What it costs
Flat dues. Per site. Banded by licensed capacity.
No royalty on revenue. No territory restrictions. No rebrand. No transfer fees when you sell. A sixty-child school doesn't pay what a two-hundred-child school pays, and multi-site operators get volume pricing.
Below 80 licensed capacity, the economics usually don't work yet. Tell us your capacity and we'll be straight with you.
The founding cohort
A limited number of founding schools, before general enrollment opens.
What you get: your rate locked for three years, direct access to the team building the platform, and a say in what gets built next.
What we ask: let us document what happens in your school and publish it.
09 · Questions
Frequently asked questions.
The questions owners ask before they apply. If yours isn't here, email us — you'll get an answer from Marnie, not a sales team.
About membership
Curriculum and teaching
The platform
Support
Still have a question? Email marnie@innovationadvantagegroup.com — we answer every one.
10 · Apply
Apply to be part of our founding cohort.
Tell us about your school, your licensed capacity and what you're trying to fix — fill in the application and we'll take it from there.
Three steps to start.
- 1
Apply to become part of the founding cohort.
Fill in the application form on this page.
- 2
Get on a call with our team.
We walk the five departments against your school, and send the full membership terms before you commit.
- 3
Sign, then choose your date in Winter Park.
If you're accepted, you sign the membership agreement and pick your in-person meeting at the lab school, where we map your school's transformation together.
Prefer email? Apply by email — or send any question to marnie@innovationadvantagegroup.com.