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A chief executive at Pearson has said that the company needs to become an "Electronic Arts for education".
Luyen Chou, chief production officer for Pearson's K-12 technology group, was speaking at the SIIA Ed Tech Business Forum.
He told gigaom.com that traditional academic publishers need to keep up with the changing digital environment, and not just by digitising textbooks.
“[That includes] digital studios, animators, illustrators, producers, 3-D artists," he said. "We need to build that capacity within instructional companies like Pearson and we need the whole end-to-end supply chain to the take that from the studio to the actual users. The folks that have done that well are the EAs of the world, digital studios," he said.
"That’s not a core competency for companies like Pearson.”
He continued: “I take it for granted that we’re going to have a huge strategic advantage by way of the data we have on our customers, our students . . . [But] you can have the best data and the best algorithms in the world, but if what it ends up serving up is digitised versions of 2-D static content, it’s not going to sell either."
According to Baran Rosen, president of media investment bank Whitestone Communications, who was also at the event, Pearson has spent $1.6bn on acquisitions over the past 12 months. “They are going to really be a pure-play education company,” he said. “That’s where they’re staking their future and they’re doing it in a big way.”