While Noah Burdett has already completed an entry on this venture, I thought I would expand and look at the project from a different angle. I have closely followed the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project for a number of years now; the philosophy and controversy behind the project fascinates me. Negroponte and the program have struggled to get the devices produced, on budget (the XO no longer referred to as the $100 laptop), and adopted by countries.
However, after finding this video:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/nicholas_negroponte_takes_olpc_to_colombia.html
I think Negroponte may have found a buyer that typically has much deeper pockets than the educational branch of government one would expect this product would be marketed to. Here, Negroponte partners with the Columbian Ministry of Defense to bring laptops to children in remote areas.
Depending on the motivations of a country’s military, having a wired, educated, distributed network of users in remote locations that have traditionally been under the control of guerrillas or insurgents could prove a boon to these isolated areas.
As adage goes, the military rarely holds bake sales to fund its operations and the paltry $200 cost per device compared to other communications systems typically employed by the military could make this a very interesting experiment – and most importantly, will get these device into the hands of the kids.
Running this through the cube we get:
Market: Developing Nations (and philanthropic individuals in developed nations who participate in the buy one, give one program).
Offering: this is a hardware offering and arguably a service as the mesh network created by the laptops for a community web.
Buyer: Still a national level – only large scale purchases can produce the low price of these machines. If Negroponte can “pitch” the benefits to branches of government other than education, we will see some significant development of this project.
Piece of the global market: Definitely targeted towards underserved, developing nations with established education system but little other supported technology.
Development of the market: This is a contentious piece. Many think this project can revolutionize education in impoverished areas – many think that $200 per child could be better spent on teachers, food, clean water, shelter, etc…. The market seems to be still in the pioneering phase.
Integration of learning technology: The environments that these laptops are entering have, almost by definition of the marketplace, little integrated learning technology as we would see it from a western perspective. The laptops offer a quantum leap in environments where they are placed.
