Leadership Spotlight

Pearson Education and the Wharton School have announced the launch of Wharton School Publishing, an innovative new player in global business publishing. Wharton School Publishing will provide practical knowledge that can be applied by business leaders to make real changes in their professional lives.

Wharton School Publishing will publish a select group of the world's foremost business thinkers in print, audio, and interactive formats.All titles will receive the Wharton seal of approval, ensuring that each is timely, important, conceptually sound, empirically based and implementable.They will include books, audio books, e-documents, CD-ROMs, and videos.Wharton School Publishing's editorial focus on applicable knowledge, along with multimedia publishing, will enable readers to gain new insights into the issues shaping the future of business, and plan and take action to achieve their goals.

Pearson Education is part of Pearson (NYSE:PSO), the international media company with market-leading businesses in education, business information and consumer publishing. Through Pearson's extensive distribution channels, Wharton School Publishing aims to become the world's leading imprint for applied business knowledge, publishing in multiple languages and reaching all corners of the world.

Wharton School Publishing represents distinguished authors from the world's leading business schools and corporations, including CK Prahalad, co- author of the breakthrough bestseller, Competing For the Future; management guru Kenichi Ohmae; former Citigroup Chief Technical Officer Colin Crook; leading members of the Wharton School faculty, such as Marketing Professor Jerry Wind; and other academics.

The imprint's first two titles are Wind and Crook's The Power of Impossible Thinking: How to Transform the Business of Your Life and the Life of Your Business, and Prahalad's The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits. Other forthcoming titles include Will Your Next Mistake Be Fatal? Avoiding the Mistake Chain That Can Destroy Your Organization; The Enthusiastic Employee: What Workers Want, And Why Employers Should Give It To Them; and Conflict and Consensus: Why Great Leaders Don't Take Yes For An Answer.

Ahead of the imprint's first release in July 2004, Wharton School Publishing is showcasing book content and other materials free of charge at www.whartonsp.com. Visitors will be able to read and download book excerpts from March 1 through the imprint's official launch in summer 2004.New texts will appear on a regular basis each month.

Marjorie Scardino, Chief Executive of Pearson, said, "The world's best companies and business people keep investing in learning throughout their lives. Our partnership with Wharton will turn the latest academic ideas into practical learning that business people can apply to make their companies more valuable."

"Wharton School Publishing is really an extension of the School's long-standing commitment to excellence in business education, thought leadership, and to the creation and dissemination of knowledge," said Dean Patrick Harker. "This initiative also reinforces our belief that people learn in multiple ways - whether it be books, audio or interactive tools. Wharton School Publishing's variety of offerings will meet those needs, and, perhaps most important, will come with the Wharton seal of approval."

Fifteen leading Wharton faculty members sit on the Wharton School Publishing editorial board. The board's responsibilities include identifying topics for books and ensuring the consistent quality of the imprint's portfolio. Wharton School Publishing's co-editors are Wharton Marketing Professor Jerry Wind and Pearson Education's Tim Moore.

(For more information, please read our interview with Wharton School Publishing co-editor Jerry Wind.)