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.
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