Pearson's Andy Bird: "Our business model was broken"

The Times Tech Podcast

Will Morley

Business, Unknown, Technology

4.9 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2021

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Pearson’s Andy Bird: “Education is going to be disrupted like music”

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Andy Bird, chief executive of Pearson, to talk about transforming the education giant (5:40), creating textbook “playlists” (8:30), growing up in Manchester (14:45), getting into the entertainment industry (16:10), being recruited by Bob Iger (21:30), remaking Disney's foreign operations (23:05), cutting ties with Netflix (27:40), failing at Disney’s first streaming attempt (29:10), retiring (34:25), un-retiring and join Pearson {38:00), the backlash over his ‘golden hello’ (41:00), the breakdown of the higher education business model (43:40), the future of Pearson (49:40), overhauling a 177-year-old company (52:40), and learning from failure (57:40).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Yeah, technology.
0:03.0	What is it all about?
0:04.3	The education sector, the learning sector, is going to go through exactly the same type of disruption
0:10.5	that's happened in the music and the media industry.
0:13.2	Really early on in the race, because what we're seeing at the moment is a adaptation of an
0:18.2	analogue model.
0:19.4	We're yet to really see the left field, whatever it is, that's going to really impact learning.
0:28.0	And I hope that that really left field thing comes from Pearson.
0:32.7	Lectures in the Metaverse.
0:34.7	With Mark Zuckerberg.
0:36.8	Absolutely.
0:37.2	Absolutely. Hello and welcome to Danny and the Valley,
0:49.6	your weekly dispatch from behind the scenes and inside the minds of the top people in tech.
0:53.6	Thank you for
0:54.9	tuning in. How are we all doing? I'm doing great. And this week, we have a bit of a different
1:01.9	one for you. So, you know, usually we have on startup founders, people who are early on in their
1:07.8	journey that they hope will change the world or make them a bunch of money
1:11.6	or ideally both. Andy Bird, who is today's guest, is not that. Bird is the chief executive
1:18.8	of Pearson, which is the world's largest education company. They're worth nearly nine billion
1:25.4	pounds listed in London.
1:30.2	It is also, I believe, the oldest.
1:33.9	It is 177 years old.
	...

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