Mission möter marknad : Hur entreprenöriella affärsmodeller inom Edtech balanserar studenttillgänglighet och förlagens intressen

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how entrepreneurial business models within the Edtech sector can create value for students through increased accessibility and lower costs for course literature, while simultaneously maintaining legitimate interests of publishers and authors. The study is based on a qualitative research approach, including semi-structured interviews with Gauthier Van Malderen, CEO and co-founder of Perlego – one of the world’s leading digital subscription services for academic textbooks – and with the founder of Hypocampus Care, a Swedish Edtech company developing adaptive learning platforms for vocational education. The theoretical framework integrates Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction, Zott and Amit’s activity system model for business model design, bricolage theory (Senyard et al., 2014; Baker & Nelson, 2005), and Kamaludin et al.’s (2024) framework for social entrepreneurship. The analysis shows that both Perlego and Hypocampus Care successfully disrupt traditional publishing models through innovative approaches, the former via an ‘all-you-can-read’ subscription model, the latter via a living adaptive learning platform, generating value for all stakeholders through transparency, data sharing, and strategic partnerships. The study contributes to the understanding of how Edtech entrepreneurs navigate the tension between social mission and commercial demands.