IXL Social Enterprise Case Studies Education March 2010 | Page 2

One Laptop per Child:
Taking the Next Step
to Realizing Nicholas
Negroponte’s Vision
by Mark Rennella, Tyler McNally, Ronald Jonash, and
Hitendra Patel
For Negroponte, improving and spreading
education was the major goal; cheap
laptops seemed to be the most efficient
means to achieve the goal.

In 1999, Nicholas Negroponte was inspired by
observing the impact of laptop computing on young
students in Cambodia, as reported to the television news program, 60 Minutes. The students were
gathered in a school that he and his wife had helped
to found. They were using Panasonic “Toughbooks” — rugged laptop computers that energized
the rural classroom, connecting it via WiFi to the
resources of the Internet. Looking back several
years later, Negroponte remembered the educational benefits of this kind of technology: “A village
that had no books suddenly had access to Google.
It changed their lives in several ways, improving
self-esteem and empowerment, and fulfilling the
passion for learning.”1 For Negroponte, improving
and spreading education was the major goal; cheap
laptops seemed to be the most efficient means to
achieve the goal.
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) sprang from this
experience into a program whose goal is to see that
no children are left behind the digital divide in their
education. Six years after that visit to Cambodia,
Negroponte announced the existence of this new
non-profit from the august halls of the 2005 World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and introduced a prototype of that computer (which would be

known as the “XO”). The XO was a rugged equivalent to the Toughbook but designed for kids. All
that was offered at an almost unfathomably lower
price: OLPC’s target price of $100 compared to typical small lightweight computers on the market for
around $2,500. (At this time, small and lightweight
laptops were more expensive than bulkier and
heavier ones.)2 OLPC’s eventual goal was to ensure
that every child in the world had access to laptops in
the classroom and in daily life. (This is often referred
to as “1:1” computing programs.) (See Exhibit 1 for
a full description of the XO’s functions.)
The world took notice. Less than two years after this
announcement, OLPC (which is based in Cambridge,
Massachusetts and closely associated with the MIT
Media Lab that Negroponte helped to found in 1985)
had garnered $29 million in funding from a wide
range of high-profile tech companies, such as: Marvell, eBay, Brightstar, Quanta, Nortel, Chi Lin, News
Corp, AMD, Google and Red Hat.3 On the other hand,
many critics felt that the price was impossibly low.
Computer manufacturers like Intel were threatened
and its Chairman took an antagonistic stance, describing the computer as a “$100 Gadget.” Bill Gates
thought the screen was too small.4
.

Exhibit 1: A Description of the XO’s Functionality
OLPC’s XO laptop offers a cohesive integrated software
platform. The special features like a built-in video
camera, high-resolution screen, long battery life, and
pull-string charging makes it enjoyable and easy-to-use
for children of all ages.
OLPC’s XO laptop includes a long-lasting nickel-metal
hydride battery that allows the XO to operate between
6 and 20 hours depending on what features are in
use. When power sockets aren’t available, users can
recharge the battery with a built-in pull-string charger.
The XO laptop also provides network access with a
unique wireless mesh network technology and includes
a built-in microphone and an integrated camera that can
capture video at 30 frames per second with a resolution
of 640x480. The laptop has a directional pad and game
buttons integrated into the screen bezel in addition to a
rubber-membrane keyboard and a touchpad that also
supports stylus input.
The laptop-user interface, the software that children
navigate to interact with the computer, is called Sugar.

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Based on the Linux operating system, Sugar is designed
to encourage social interaction and collaboration and
is currently offered in 25 languages. It starts with a
range of activities, not programs, and promotes the
sharing of these activities both online and through the
physical interaction a child has with the computer.
Nicholas Negroponte describes it as “active learning.”
The system includes also a built-in chat system as well
as a web browser based on Mozilla Firefox, providing
opportunities for communication with and exposure to
the global world.
The next step for OLPC’s XO is the XO-3 tablet, an
affordable handheld media-center.
Sources: Charlie Sorrel, “XO-3 Concept: A Crazy-Thin Tablet
OLPC for Just $75,” Wired, December 23, 2009, http://www.
wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/xo-3-concept-a-crazy-thintablet-olpc-for-just-75/, accessed March 6, 2010 and Ryan
Paul, “A comparison of OLPC’s XO laptop and Intel’s Classmate
PC,” March 5, 2007, ars technica, http://arstechnica.com/old/
content/2007/03/acomparison-of-olpcs-xo-laptop-and-intelsclassmate-pc.ars, accessed March 8, 2010.

John A. Quelch and Carin-Isabel Knoop, “Making the ‘$100 Laptop,’ ”HBS No. 9-508-024, (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishind, 2008), p. 1.
John A. Quelch and Carin-Isabel Knoop, “Making the ‘$100 Laptop,’ ”HBS No. 9-508-024, (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishind, 2008), p. 3.
John A. Quelch and Carin-Isabel Knoop, “Making the ‘$100 Laptop,’ ”HBS No. 9-508-024, (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishind, 2008), p. 1.
John A. Quelch and Carin-Isabel Kn oop, “Making the ‘$100 Laptop,’ ”HBS No. 9-508-024, (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishind, 2008), p. 1
and “ ‘100 laptop begins production,’ ” BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7082701.stm, November 7, 2007, accessed March 3, 2010.

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