IP Profile of Biggest for-profit companies in EM
Research Questions
What are the 10 biggest for-profit companies in this field?
- How is the market distributed?
- Where are they located? Are there any incentives for specific locations?
- Correlate them with their main outputs (Data. Narratives. Tools)
- Understand and identify cases where these companies are “experimenting” or “adopting” commons-based approaches
- Identify these cases and treat them as entities that will also be placed in our mapping device (the quadrants)
- Identify what companies are the “Microsofts” of the field and what companies are the “IBMs” of the field
Biggest For-profit Companies
In 2005, Esposito writes, "Market share for new textbooks (that is, the $4.2 billion piece) is highly consolidated, with 6 publishers holding about 85% of all sales dollars (Pearson, Thomson, McGraw Hill, John Wiley, Houghton Mifflin, and St. Martin's/Von Holtzbrinck). Although college publishing remains highly profitable for the large players, with reported EBITDA in some instances as high as 30%, growth has stalled, due in large part to the rise of the used book business, which represents the key strategic issue in the industry today." (Esposito 2005, 2)
In October 2006, Thomson Learning was purchased by private equity firm Apax Partners and OMERS Capital Parnters, acquiring "the domestic U.S. Higher Education, Gale library,reference and International businesses of Thomson Learning" (Mickey and Meaney 2008, 156). Thomson Learning ceased to exist at this point. Cengage then sought to purchase Houghton Mifflin's College Division in 2007, finalizing the deal in 2008 to create the second largest college publisher.
Bibliography for Item 7 in EM
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