What companies are tomorrow's big winners? In our ongoing series, I'm chatting with Fool analysts and advisors to discover the stocks they're watching and the catalysts that would signal it's time to buy.

Today, newly minted advisor of Fool U.K.'s Dividend Edge service Todd Wenning shares two dividend-paying companies on his watchlist, and one that you should buy today. (For your convenience, you can now create your own version at MyWatchlist.com, your free customized hub to follow the performance and Fool coverage of the companies you care about.)

When you think of textbooks and newspapers, innovative is likely not the first adjective to pop into your head. But that's exactly the image Todd has of Pearson (NYSE: PSO), the media giant that owns Penguin Books and the Financial Times and bills itself as the world's leading education company. "They're definitely not sitting around and waiting for their industry to fade away. They are developing ways to evolve and to stay relevant," Todd says. From electronic learning programs to a very popular Financial Times iPad app, Pearson is adapting its print-centric business to an increasingly non-print world. Additionally, and of heavy importance to Todd, the company received around $2 billion in cash after two private equity firms bought financial data provider Interactive Data, in which Pearson had a 61% stake. While Pearson plans to use the money to fuel expansion, Todd is optimistic that some of it will be added to the company's already reasonable 3.5% dividend yield.

But he has questions about the world of education in general; Todd fears that we might be nearing the downside of a 20-year education bubble. With student loan debt piling up and tuition costs rising, he fears that higher education might soon be out of reach for an increasing number of potential students. He's going to keep an eye on trends in the cost of education and enrollment because if that bubble bursts, it's going to make things pretty messy for Pearson.

The problems confronting pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN) are even more foreboding. Although the company has a great balance sheet, pays a healthy dividend, and is priced attractively, it's rapidly losing patent protection on its blockbuster drugs. The company lost patent exclusivity on its breast-cancer drug Arimidex in June, and it faces upcoming patent expirations on its antipsychotic drug Seroquel and its asthma blockbuster Symbicort in the next couple of years. Together, these three drugs made up 30% of AstraZeneca's revenue in the second quarter. And the dominos will continue to fall.

But the company sports an attractive 4.8% dividend yield, and it has proven it has the skill to develop new drugs. If AstraZeneca can line up a pipeline to replace what it's losing -- and just last week, an FDA advisory panel made a positive recommendation on vandetanib, a treatment for a type of thyroid cancer -- then a purchase now could look like a bargain in retrospect.

The dividend-lover in Todd loves the moment when a company realizes it's no longer a tech darling, a daring and dashing growth company. The moment it realizes it is a mature company is usually when it really commits to its dividend. Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) is there. The world's largest semiconductor chip maker has seen its share price drop more than 15% over the past five years thanks to low-cost competitors in Asia and currently trades at one of the lowest valuation multiples ever: 11 times forward earnings with a 3% dividend. Todd anticipates Intel will roll some of its ample cash flow toward boosting that yield. And, as leading academic Jeremy Siegel writes in his The Future for Investors, with 97% of the real returns coming from dividends rather than capital growth, Todd believes he's found a long-term winner.

Todd thinks all three of these companies are worth keeping an eye on, not least because they pay investors in the form of dividends. And while those are some great businesses to dig into, there's a world more. Thousands of our readers have requested access to a special dividend report created by Motley Fool analysts, and you can download it today for free. In this report, Fool analysts cover several more outstanding dividend-paying companies, including the stock Fool analyst Jim Royal calls the "dividend play of a lifetime." To get instant access to the names of these 13 high-yielders, click here -- it's free.