Playing the market to help the children: Nicholas Negroponte
Last week, Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), was a guest on one of the best prime-time, Italian public affairs program, Otto e Mezzo. Negroponte was speaking in English and participating in the round table discussion through a translator.
As he listened politely to his fellow panelists, his blue eyes lively behind his red-framed glasses, the MIT scientist seemed at ease in the Babel-ish scenario.
One of the panelists was a popular Italian TV news host very much of the old school of traditional media (only!). At one point, he voiced the usual lament about the Internet posing a threat to quality journalism. Anyone who has ever listened to Negroponte even briefly might have easily guessed his response. He calmly dismissed such argument as unimportant to him. What is important to him, he said, is getting laptops into the hands of poor children around the world.
And how’s that going?
Not bad, according to a feature about Negroponte online at Forbes Magazine (“The Prophet of Cheap” Andy Greenberg, Dec 31, 2009). And what’s more, it emerges, Negroponte has learned that he has the power to generate response in the marketplace just by proposing a new innovation.
One Laptop Per Child, in fact, isn’t trying to create a new piece of hardware. It’s trying to create a new model for a nonprofit organization, one that is ready to innovate and disrupt pricing just enough to prod the commercial PC industry into selling cheaper, more accessible products. “We’re not aiming to create a laptop anymore,” says Negroponte. “We want to create downward pressure on the market.”
His planned tablet, which he calls the XO-3, will be developed open source and offered up for duplication to any willing PC maker. Negroponte is working to line up the right players, likely Taiwanese contract manufacturer Quanta and chip company Marvell. With those pieces in place, OLPC will either build and sell the machine itself or, even better, give its blueprints to any PC maker willing to produce and market the device. “The success of this machine will be measured by how many people copy it,” he says.
OLPC’s Negroponte: Is he or isn’t he?
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) founder Nicholas Negroponte is taking some heat from critics who are accusing him of selling out his principles in making a deal with Microsoft, according to an ars technica article yesterday (“Former security director blasts OLPC, suggests new strategy” by Ryan Paul, May 15, 2008).
The deal, described in an article today in the New York Times, was announced yesterday and provides for Microsoft’s Windows to be offered on all OLPC’s low low cost computers (“Microsoft Joins Effort for Laptops for Children” by Steve Lohr, May 16, 2008). In reference to the agreement with Microsoft, Negroponte said, according to the article, that the government officials of the countries whose poor children OLPC is trying to reach “are much more comfortable with Windows” (as an operating system for the computers).
In another piece in ars technica, also today, Negroponte is also speaking for himself about what his primary motive was in forming the alliance with Microsoft (“OLPC and Microsoft will make Windows available on XO” by Ryan Paul, May 16, 2008):
“From the beginning, the goal of OLPC has been to use technology to transform education by bringing connectivity and constructionist learning to the poorest children throughout the world,” said OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte in a statement. “Today’s announcement, coupled with future plans for a dual boot version of the XO laptop, enhances our ability to deliver on this vision.
So another way (in my opinion) of looking at Negroponte’s decision to go with Microsoft could be that he simply is keeping his eye on the ball — meaning his goal of getting computers into the hands of the millions and millions of poor children across the globe as soon as possible. Whatever it takes.
Is Negroponte’s $100 laptop idea too great for its own good?
Nicholas Negroponte’s much praised plan to provide very low-cost laptops to poor children around the world “has been derailed, in part, by the power of his idea,” according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal (“A Little Laptop With Big Ambitions – How a Computer for the Poor Got Stomped by Tech Giants,” by Steve Stecklow and James Bandler, Nov 24, 2007).
The major derailers? Microsoft and Intel. Last year, Intel introduced its own cheap laptop, price tag less than $300, for developing countries, according to the article, and earlier this year in China, Microsoft’s Bill Gates announced a $3 software package that includes Windows.
Why are the technology giants doing this? Reportedly, to drive back a threat to their future profits that Negroponte’s idea represents. The $100 laptop uses Linux and other open source software rather than Windows, and it doesn’t use Intel chips, the article states. It’s an idea that the big tech companies apparently do not want to become popular.
All’s well that ends well, however, may be the final verdict. According to the WSJ article, developing countries now have several cut-price laptop models available to them, in addition to Negroponte’s star creation. Perhaps Negroponte’s thinking out of the (proprietorial) box has started something rather interesting.
