Cross-border M&A activity is accelerating across a range of workforce and education segments, from education and training to career navigation, job search, workforce alignment, AI matching and productivity. This will not be a shock to many observers, although simply transacting across borders can require quarantine for 14 days or conducting endless due diligence meetings via […]
Read More M&A: Coronavirus and Cross-Border InvestmentRussia is not an education superpower. What if it were? This may not be an idle question as the country seeks to bolster its international position–no less under a Trump Administration–and to counteract the perception of either being a state-sponsored hacker or geopolitical bully. Domestically, Russia’s persistent de-population trend over the past quarter century coincides with a global shift […]
Read More Russia’s Untapped Potential: Beyond HackingTo the naked eye, India looks like an oasis in the middle of a wrenching emerging market economic downturn. In 2015 Indian GDP grew by 7.2% with the IMF projecting 7.6% growth over the 2016-17 period. FDI reached a record US$63 billion in 2015, exceeding China for the first time. And despite more recent concerns […]
Read More India’s Race Against Time“No need to listen for the fall. This is the World’s end.” — Rudyard Kipling, Kim During a long, cold flight to Almaty in the late 1990s I sat sleepless reading Peter Hopkirk’s landmark history of the region, “The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia.” My colleagues and I were about to spend the […]
Read More Central Asia’s New Silk Road: Game ChangersWe can only get our continent to have inclusive growth if we are educated and change our mindsets — Doreen E. Noni, World Economic Forum, 2014 It doesn’t take a great deal of macroeconomic digging to understand the profound development opportunities that are emerging across Africa, which by 2013 was receiving $57 billion in foreign direct […]
Read More Opportunities in African Education: A Brief Glance at the Data“A fly before his own eye is bigger than an elephant in the next field.” Anon. (Chinese) It is tempting to watch the merry-go-round of dealmaking among education entrepreneurs and venture geeks and settle into the idea that one can just can invest into something quickly, build scale and dominate a particular corner of the education market–or, if that […]
Read More M&A in Asia's Education Sector: Flies and ElephantsBy 2030 Asia will witness intensifying urbanization, rising disposable incomes, a shift to service sector training needs, millions more students studying abroad (within and outside of Asia), and extended student lifecycles focused on adult and continuing education. These trends were present first in Japan in 1970s and 80s, then the “Asian Tigers” of Korea, Hong […]
Read More Asia's Brain Race II – Investment Returns and PitfallsAmerican MOOCs (massive open online courses) have always been geared toward large emerging markets so it is no surprise that leaders such as Coursera and EdX are now hurtling into China. It seems deceptively easy: MOOCs deliver course content from US universities through free or low-cost alternatives. They partner with Chinese University counterparts or ISPs […]
Read More MOOCs in China – Dream On?By 2030 Asia’s emerging middle class is expected to account for over 60 per cent of total world spending and, if past history is any guide, a significant part of family budgets will be spent on education. But what exactly? A recent survey by MasterCard profiled 16 markets in the Asia-Pacific over 2012-13 and asked families how […]
Read More Where are Asian Households Spending Their Money? (Hint: Education)Universities have been around for centuries, and for good reason: they move glacially, if at all. If you were look at a list of the leading American companies in 1920 and try to determine how many have survived to the present day, that number could be counted on both hands. This is not the case for Universities. They […]
Read More What Multinationals Can Teach Universities Expanding into Emerging Markets