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Pearson Plc Report
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The assignment is to be carried out individually and independently- neither seek nor accept any advice or guidance from anyone other than the module co- ordinator or his agents. You are required to produce a typed document (in your own words) of a specified 3,000 word length. Note that the word count excludes: the title page; contents page; executive summary; reference list; and no more than six pages of relevant appendices. See the Submission Requirements Section later in this document for further explanation of the word count requirements. Your report should apply relevant theory, models, frameworks, issues and management vocabulary and draw upon your own secondary and tertiary research. Throughout this assignment, students should demonstrate their skills, knowledge and expertise in applying sound principles. Please refer in particular to Tables 1 and 2 and Appendix 1 in this document. The assignment is to be written in the format of a single Report and must address the requirements of the following assignment brief.
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ENTERPRISE AND INNOVATION:
PEARSON PLC REPORT
Student's Name
Course
Professor's Name
University
City (State)
Date
Executive Summary
Pearson Plc is a British learning company that develops and sells learning and education content in various fields digitally and physically. The company exists in an industry that is going through some significant shifts in the form of advancement in technology (fourth industrial revolution), growth of middle class around the world and the subsequent demand for quality education, and the changing consumer behaviors who are suggesting to make learning experiences more personalized, measurable, and convenient for them. Surrounded by these drivers for innovation and change, the company adopts specific strategies by identifying areas in which future growth can lie. These areas include online and digital tools for schools and the education sector at large, learning apps, analyzing and filling the workforce skill gap, and providing accreditation and certification services to contribute to society by setting the same prescribed standard of educational quality.
Its products are diversified and include physical learning material distributed to institutions and corporations, plus digital material in videos and presentations. In addition to that, the company also runs programs to help the corporate employees reskill or upskill.
The report finds that the company has gained more sustainability across its business due to its strategy of dividing the business into five lines: virtual learning, English language learning, higher education, workforce skills, and assessments. Furthermore, the company's digital sales have increased consistently over the last five years, thus pointing to the fact that it has gained more competitive advantage during this time. All this can be attributed to effective innovation management, which is pursued aggressively. As a result, as the education sector adopts more technology and demand increases worldwide, Pearson Plc stands well-positioned to dominate the industry.
Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u 1.Introduction to Pearson Plc PAGEREF _Toc77604850 \h 12.Drivers for Change and Innovation PAGEREF _Toc77604851 \h 22.1 Fourth Industrial Revolution PAGEREF _Toc77604852 \h 22.2 Growing Global Middle Class PAGEREF _Toc77604853 \h 22.3 Changing Consumer Behaviors PAGEREF _Toc77604854 \h 33.Innovation Pentathlon Framework PAGEREF _Toc77604855 \h 43.1 Strategy PAGEREF _Toc77604856 \h 53.2 Ideas Generation PAGEREF _Toc77604857 \h 63.3 Selection of Ideas PAGEREF _Toc77604858 \h 73.4 Implementation and Challenges PAGEREF _Toc77604859 \h 93.5 People and Organization PAGEREF _Toc77604860 \h 103.6 Outputs (Products, Processes, and Services) PAGEREF _Toc77604861 \h 104.Contribution of Innovation Management PAGEREF _Toc77604862 \h 114.1 Impact on Sustainability PAGEREF _Toc77604863 \h 114.2 Impact on Competitive Advantage PAGEREF _Toc77604864 \h 12Reference List PAGEREF _Toc77604865 \h 14
1
2 Introduction to Pearson Plc
Pearson Plc is a British learning company established in 1844. The company acquires, develops, and sells learning content to educators, institutions, corporations, and students worldwide. In addition to supplying the content, the company also provides assessment services to these stakeholders. The goal is to enhance people's learning experience and improve their impact on their careers and lives (Pearson Plc, 2021a).
Pearson Plc is involved in the publishing business, in which it has a list of authors, educators, and contributors who share their content in the physical or digital form. In addition to this, there are experts in technical areas, such as Mathematics, helping to provide learning content in an interactive way to the students and the educators. The delivery of such technical knowledge may take the form of a mobile application. Thus, the company also develops learning mobile applications that can be installed on smartphones.
Pearson Plc has been in the learning business for over a century and has enormous learning resources for its customers for a fee. Different institutions and educators can contact the company or partner with it, asking for course coverage or solving their specific learning problems. On the other hand, the students may also log into the online sources that may need to be subscribed if the student is not affiliated with any of Pearson's partners (Pearson Plc, 2021c). The same institutions, educators, and students can also assess their educational quality, learning standard, and knowledge through Pearson assessments (Pearson Plc, 2021a). Some of these institutions also receive accreditations from Pearson, for which the company is fully authorized by the concerned bodies, especially in countries like England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
Furthermore, the company also owns some brands in the industry, such as Addison Wesley and Prentice-Hall. The purpose of this report is to describe the different market drivers for innovation and Pearson's innovation management in response to these drivers (Pearson Plc, 2021a). At last, the report discusses the contribution of this innovative management to its sustainability and competitive advantage.
3 Drivers for Change and Innovation
The fundamental changes in the market that are pushing learning and education companies, such as Pearson Plc, to innovate their processes and revamp their delivery to the consumers are as follows:
2.1 Fourth Industrial Revolution
In a theoretical sense, the fourth industrial revolution means the world's changes in the forms of artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, robotics, the internet of things (IoT), and genetic engineering (Goffin and Mitchell, 2016). These are fields of advanced knowledge whose development and enhancement are pushing growth in multiple sectors. As a result, the old problems are getting solved, and many new challenges are emerging. In the face of such challenges, developing a human resource that is knowledgeable, skilled, and resourceful is vital. Therefore, the learning companies have a significant role in it as they are involved in publishing and distributing learning material, conducting educational sessions, and performing critical assessments of human resources and human potential (Pearson Plc, 2020). Thus, the coming time will belong to those skilled with these latest technologies and comfortable using them to achieve desired results (Sidorkin and Warford, 2017).
2.2 Growing Global Middle Class
As education has improved globally and the awareness amongst the poor regarding the necessity of education has increased, the global middle class has increased. For example, consider the figure below, which shows how economic classes have changed in numbers from 2011 to 2019.
Figure 1: The comparison between different economic classes in 2011 vs. 2019 (Pew Research Center, 2021)
It can be seen in the figure that the global middle class had risen from 899 million in 2011 to 1335 million in 2019. The rise in education and learning demand has accompanied this rise in the middle-income group. Furthermore, the middle class has realized that quality education is the only way to maintain a good living standard and excel in professional lives. Hence, the learning companies face an opportunity to try and capture this demand and make the middle-class's educational experiences filled with quality to ensure a competitive advantage.
2.3 Changing Consumer Behaviors
Consumption of content is also changing. There is more use of digital tools to watch education videos, give lectures, and access a wide range of topics of any given topic (Karlsson and Magnussen, 2019). The inherent convenience with such a mode of education and learning is that the content can be stored for use later at any time. Furthermore, it gives an experience of personalization to the consumers who can tune in to watch and learn their most complex subjects. This trend of personalized services is not unique to the learning industry; it is carried to this industry mainly from the e-commerce world. Moreover, it means that the trend can be expected to sustain for a more extended period (Pearson Plc, 2020). Hence, the learning industry is getting pushed to innovate and keep up with the changing consumer behaviors that are dynamically being shaped by their experiences on different platforms.
Furthermore, a look at the current form of the learning industry shows that the digital revolution is a dire need. For example, the learning industry is currently valued at £5 trillion, out of which only 3% is digital (Pearson Plc, 2020). It calls for more efforts from these learning companies, like Person Plc, to introduce innovative ways to educate more people while maintaining or improving the quality.
4 Innovation Pentathlon Framework
This framework is used to describe and map the innovation strategy and implantation for any company. It is depicted in the following figure:
Figure 2: Innovation Pentathlon Framework (Karlsson and Magnussen, 2019)
As the figure shows, this framework consists of five parts, constituting the innovation process and strategy. The sixth element is of outputs in the form of products, processes, and services. Each company starts with a strategy that shows it the routes on which it can walk. In other words, the first part of the strategy applies to identifying different directions in which the company could go (Serdyukov, 2017). The second part is about generating different ideas that can help along the way, meaning different solutions to problems and challenges that have been identified on those routes (Yunus, 2018). The third part is about selection, in which the company prioritizes from the list of the ideas that have been generated. The fourth step is implementation, and it means putting the ideas into practice as per the prioritization. While implementing, companies are faced with different challenges internally. These relate to the employees and the organizational culture. Therefore, having a strategy to mitigate those challenges identified is significant (Guan et al., 2020). The following subsections deal with the application of this framework to Pearson Plc.
3.1 Strategy
Pearson's strategy is to identify opportunities in learning and education and pursue them aggressively (Pearson Plc 2020). These opportunities are being shaped by the drivers identified in the previous section. Hence, the company identifies the following areas in which it can play its r...
PEARSON PLC REPORT
Student's Name
Course
Professor's Name
University
City (State)
Date
Executive Summary
Pearson Plc is a British learning company that develops and sells learning and education content in various fields digitally and physically. The company exists in an industry that is going through some significant shifts in the form of advancement in technology (fourth industrial revolution), growth of middle class around the world and the subsequent demand for quality education, and the changing consumer behaviors who are suggesting to make learning experiences more personalized, measurable, and convenient for them. Surrounded by these drivers for innovation and change, the company adopts specific strategies by identifying areas in which future growth can lie. These areas include online and digital tools for schools and the education sector at large, learning apps, analyzing and filling the workforce skill gap, and providing accreditation and certification services to contribute to society by setting the same prescribed standard of educational quality.
Its products are diversified and include physical learning material distributed to institutions and corporations, plus digital material in videos and presentations. In addition to that, the company also runs programs to help the corporate employees reskill or upskill.
The report finds that the company has gained more sustainability across its business due to its strategy of dividing the business into five lines: virtual learning, English language learning, higher education, workforce skills, and assessments. Furthermore, the company's digital sales have increased consistently over the last five years, thus pointing to the fact that it has gained more competitive advantage during this time. All this can be attributed to effective innovation management, which is pursued aggressively. As a result, as the education sector adopts more technology and demand increases worldwide, Pearson Plc stands well-positioned to dominate the industry.
Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u 1.Introduction to Pearson Plc PAGEREF _Toc77604850 \h 12.Drivers for Change and Innovation PAGEREF _Toc77604851 \h 22.1 Fourth Industrial Revolution PAGEREF _Toc77604852 \h 22.2 Growing Global Middle Class PAGEREF _Toc77604853 \h 22.3 Changing Consumer Behaviors PAGEREF _Toc77604854 \h 33.Innovation Pentathlon Framework PAGEREF _Toc77604855 \h 43.1 Strategy PAGEREF _Toc77604856 \h 53.2 Ideas Generation PAGEREF _Toc77604857 \h 63.3 Selection of Ideas PAGEREF _Toc77604858 \h 73.4 Implementation and Challenges PAGEREF _Toc77604859 \h 93.5 People and Organization PAGEREF _Toc77604860 \h 103.6 Outputs (Products, Processes, and Services) PAGEREF _Toc77604861 \h 104.Contribution of Innovation Management PAGEREF _Toc77604862 \h 114.1 Impact on Sustainability PAGEREF _Toc77604863 \h 114.2 Impact on Competitive Advantage PAGEREF _Toc77604864 \h 12Reference List PAGEREF _Toc77604865 \h 14
1
2 Introduction to Pearson Plc
Pearson Plc is a British learning company established in 1844. The company acquires, develops, and sells learning content to educators, institutions, corporations, and students worldwide. In addition to supplying the content, the company also provides assessment services to these stakeholders. The goal is to enhance people's learning experience and improve their impact on their careers and lives (Pearson Plc, 2021a).
Pearson Plc is involved in the publishing business, in which it has a list of authors, educators, and contributors who share their content in the physical or digital form. In addition to this, there are experts in technical areas, such as Mathematics, helping to provide learning content in an interactive way to the students and the educators. The delivery of such technical knowledge may take the form of a mobile application. Thus, the company also develops learning mobile applications that can be installed on smartphones.
Pearson Plc has been in the learning business for over a century and has enormous learning resources for its customers for a fee. Different institutions and educators can contact the company or partner with it, asking for course coverage or solving their specific learning problems. On the other hand, the students may also log into the online sources that may need to be subscribed if the student is not affiliated with any of Pearson's partners (Pearson Plc, 2021c). The same institutions, educators, and students can also assess their educational quality, learning standard, and knowledge through Pearson assessments (Pearson Plc, 2021a). Some of these institutions also receive accreditations from Pearson, for which the company is fully authorized by the concerned bodies, especially in countries like England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
Furthermore, the company also owns some brands in the industry, such as Addison Wesley and Prentice-Hall. The purpose of this report is to describe the different market drivers for innovation and Pearson's innovation management in response to these drivers (Pearson Plc, 2021a). At last, the report discusses the contribution of this innovative management to its sustainability and competitive advantage.
3 Drivers for Change and Innovation
The fundamental changes in the market that are pushing learning and education companies, such as Pearson Plc, to innovate their processes and revamp their delivery to the consumers are as follows:
2.1 Fourth Industrial Revolution
In a theoretical sense, the fourth industrial revolution means the world's changes in the forms of artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, robotics, the internet of things (IoT), and genetic engineering (Goffin and Mitchell, 2016). These are fields of advanced knowledge whose development and enhancement are pushing growth in multiple sectors. As a result, the old problems are getting solved, and many new challenges are emerging. In the face of such challenges, developing a human resource that is knowledgeable, skilled, and resourceful is vital. Therefore, the learning companies have a significant role in it as they are involved in publishing and distributing learning material, conducting educational sessions, and performing critical assessments of human resources and human potential (Pearson Plc, 2020). Thus, the coming time will belong to those skilled with these latest technologies and comfortable using them to achieve desired results (Sidorkin and Warford, 2017).
2.2 Growing Global Middle Class
As education has improved globally and the awareness amongst the poor regarding the necessity of education has increased, the global middle class has increased. For example, consider the figure below, which shows how economic classes have changed in numbers from 2011 to 2019.
Figure 1: The comparison between different economic classes in 2011 vs. 2019 (Pew Research Center, 2021)
It can be seen in the figure that the global middle class had risen from 899 million in 2011 to 1335 million in 2019. The rise in education and learning demand has accompanied this rise in the middle-income group. Furthermore, the middle class has realized that quality education is the only way to maintain a good living standard and excel in professional lives. Hence, the learning companies face an opportunity to try and capture this demand and make the middle-class's educational experiences filled with quality to ensure a competitive advantage.
2.3 Changing Consumer Behaviors
Consumption of content is also changing. There is more use of digital tools to watch education videos, give lectures, and access a wide range of topics of any given topic (Karlsson and Magnussen, 2019). The inherent convenience with such a mode of education and learning is that the content can be stored for use later at any time. Furthermore, it gives an experience of personalization to the consumers who can tune in to watch and learn their most complex subjects. This trend of personalized services is not unique to the learning industry; it is carried to this industry mainly from the e-commerce world. Moreover, it means that the trend can be expected to sustain for a more extended period (Pearson Plc, 2020). Hence, the learning industry is getting pushed to innovate and keep up with the changing consumer behaviors that are dynamically being shaped by their experiences on different platforms.
Furthermore, a look at the current form of the learning industry shows that the digital revolution is a dire need. For example, the learning industry is currently valued at £5 trillion, out of which only 3% is digital (Pearson Plc, 2020). It calls for more efforts from these learning companies, like Person Plc, to introduce innovative ways to educate more people while maintaining or improving the quality.
4 Innovation Pentathlon Framework
This framework is used to describe and map the innovation strategy and implantation for any company. It is depicted in the following figure:
Figure 2: Innovation Pentathlon Framework (Karlsson and Magnussen, 2019)
As the figure shows, this framework consists of five parts, constituting the innovation process and strategy. The sixth element is of outputs in the form of products, processes, and services. Each company starts with a strategy that shows it the routes on which it can walk. In other words, the first part of the strategy applies to identifying different directions in which the company could go (Serdyukov, 2017). The second part is about generating different ideas that can help along the way, meaning different solutions to problems and challenges that have been identified on those routes (Yunus, 2018). The third part is about selection, in which the company prioritizes from the list of the ideas that have been generated. The fourth step is implementation, and it means putting the ideas into practice as per the prioritization. While implementing, companies are faced with different challenges internally. These relate to the employees and the organizational culture. Therefore, having a strategy to mitigate those challenges identified is significant (Guan et al., 2020). The following subsections deal with the application of this framework to Pearson Plc.
3.1 Strategy
Pearson's strategy is to identify opportunities in learning and education and pursue them aggressively (Pearson Plc 2020). These opportunities are being shaped by the drivers identified in the previous section. Hence, the company identifies the following areas in which it can play its r...
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