Public Funding for Ashridge Executive & Organisation Development Limited

Digitisation of media has led to a fundamental change in its consumption, moving from long-form (albums, books, courses) to short-form (songs, chapters, modules). Increased access to content has also led to a ‘content is free’ culture amongst many users. Just as music and software are tackling these challenges through new business models like Spotify, iTunes and app stores, the educational publishing industry must do the same if creators are to increase the value of their content. This project will develop key innovations in metadata use to enable a Digital Learning Marketplace(DLM). Users can find simple content components and combine them into more powerful 'nuggets'. By exploiting and extending existing metadata, the DLM will make content searching simple, manage rights and distribute royalties. However, we must overcome a number of technical barriers in decomposing content, persistence of metadata, rights tracking in complex objects, fingerprinting and royalty distribution. TSB support can help us realise this £55m p.a. UK business opportunity.