IXL Social Enterprise Case Studies Education March 2010 | 页面 7

One Laptop per Child: Taking the Next Step to Realizing Nicholas Negroponte’s Vision Some players in this arena, such as Bill Gates, advocated connecting parts of communications infrastructure already existing in a number of developing countries — such as cell phones, keyboards and television sets — to cobble together something that was like an Internet-enabled computer.30 Recent Developments In 2009, OLPC split its operations to achieve more efficiency. While advocacy and engineering would remain in Cambridge, Massachusetts, much of the operations and overseeing of manufacturing as well as the implementation of programs would be done in Miami. Miami was also much closer to much of the most promising OLPC activity that was taking place in Latin America: Peru, Uruguay, and Argentina. The two offices seem to have achieved a better focus on their respective responsibilities in accomplishing OLPC’s vision. And the addition to the OLPC leadership in May of 2008 of Charles Kane, who boasts a series of high-level positions in the tech industry, added more expertise in running OLPC as a business. As Kane put it, “Profit and high ideas are not a contradiction: we use the profit for good ends, but we need a sustainable business.”31 To open 2010, OLPC partnered with General Mills in a “Win One Give One” campaign. Using codes printed on boxes of Betty Crocker fruit flavored snacks, kids can enter a daily drawing to win an XO, with another given away that day to a student in Africa. The campaign will last 240 days.32 There are hopeful signs of growing demand now in Brazil. Preceding 2010, the government of Brazil has looked into buying large amounts of XO-style laptops. A new approach that has appealed to the Brazilian government recently is to ship the XO’s parts that are made in assemble them in Brazil. This can create jobs for Brazilians while simultaneously helping to achieve OLPC’s mission: a win-win partnership. (For an overall view of the deployment of XOs around the world up to 2009, please see Exhibits 4a and 4b). Exhibit 4 for XOs Deployed up to 2009 Geographic Distribution Numerical Distribution Number of XOs Deployed up to 2009 Peru Uruguay Rwanda Mexico USA Mongolia Halti Cameroon Mali Palestinian Territories Nigeria Ethiopia Nicaragua Afghanistan Oceania/Papua New Guinea Nepal Paraguay Colombia Mozambique Burundi Brazil Australia Sri Lanka Iraq Ghana China Cambodia India Italy Swaziland Thailand Lebanon 0 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000 100,000 400,000 500,000 Source: “XO Deployment Map”, Google Maps, http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?vps=1&ie=UTF8&hl=en&oe=UTF8&jsv=195b&msa =0&msid=117971109315445137845.0004707da4032b195ad88, accessed March 10, 2010. 30 John A. Quelch and Carin-Isabel Knoop, “ ‘Making the ‘$100 Laptop,’ ”HBS No. 9-508-024, (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishind, 2008), p. 5. 31 Interview with Charles Kane, January 7, 2010. 32 Interview with OLPC staff, March 1, 2010. See also the Win One Give One web site: http://winonegiveone.com/#, accessed March 4, 2010. P. 7