Education giant Pearson is proving they can be entrepreneurial. The leading learning company announced Wednesday a strategic partnership with Exponential TechSpace, LearnLaunch and LearnLaunchX — a collaboration meant to bring innovation to education.
The news is big for Boston's budding, albeit booming, ed tech community.
"We are thrilled to have Pearson demonstrate their strong support for the emerging ed tech ecosystem in Boston through this partnership," said Hakan Satiroglu, founder of Exponential TechSpace and co-founder of LearnLaunchX, in a release. "Promising ed tech startups need the opportunity to collaborate with industry leaders like Pearson."
LearnLaunch surfaced at the end of 2012 as a nonprofit catered to harnessing the Hub's entrepreneurial energy buzzing around the education space. In February, they announced the opening of Boston's first ed tech accelerator LearnLaunchX, which graduated its first cohort of seven startups in September. In the midst of the activity, Exponential TechSpace launched as the overarching "ed tech entrepreneurship campus."
As part of the partnership, Pearson employees will provide mentorship to startups springing out of LearnLaunchX, as well as dole out product guidance and market information to fellow ed tech innovators. On the other side, LearnLaunchX companies innovating in the K-12 space will have the opportunity to join Pearson's partner community of independent software vendors.
"At Pearson, we believe that technology has the power to transform education, but also recognize that the industry faces some big challenges that we can't tackle alone,” said Diana Stepner, head of future technologies at Pearson, in a release.
In June, fellow learning leader McGraw-Hill Education also stepped up its startup game, opening an R&D center in the heart of Boston's Innovation District. In a prior interview with BostInno, McGraw-Hill Education's Chief Digital Officer Stephen Laster said, "The goal of these R&D centers is to bring entrepreneurial people together and let the ideas flow."
In Boston, those ideas are now getting more innovative.
Featured Photo Courtesy of LearnLaunchX
