Most educational publishers and many other businesses have invested heavily in building software platforms to present materials for schools and universities. The amounts of money invested have been astonishing in some cases. Financial and pedagogical successes have been limited.

At Macmillan we have focussed on a subset of education rather than the whole curriculum and we have concentrated on building a system which uses technology in the context of the traditional classroom and with the teacher absolutely playing the central role. The subset is the teaching of English for non-English speakers and the project is known as the Macmillan English Campus (MEC). Today we announce a new edition which will further strengthen our leadership in this important and fast-growing market. Everyone at Macmillan is proud of what we've achieved not only in creating a brand new business but in showing that online education actually works - both students and teachers have confirmed that our language is learnt faster and better using MEC.

While innovations such as MEC are flourishing, other parts of the publishing industry are still enmired in legal actions and arguments about copyright in a digital world. We have to find solutions and we have to be flexible. This announcement about so-called 'orphan works' is another example of our industry's efforts to adapt and take leadership in the digital world.

Not all things digital are good though. This 3-D model was produced for a business English course we are publishing. I imagine this particular CEO avatar might deter anyone from aspiring to be one.