The May 20 edition of 60 Minutes featured the One Laptop Per Child project, spearheaded by passionate MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte. If you haven't heard, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit organization founded by Negroponte in 2005 aimed at providing an internet-ready laptop computer to poor children around the world with a target price of $100 each. The first half of the 60 Minutes story was a feel good piece (available here); but in the second half, Negroponte accused Intel of working to destroy his dream through its own low-cost computer effort. This of course begs the question - is Intel's challenge driving improvement or killing Negroponte's dream?
So far, both OLPC and Intel are in the early innings of their competition. OLPC has a $179 working model in tests in Cambodia and Brazil. Intel's Classmate laptop at a similar price point was just recently released and is in similar testing. Neither side has managed to secure major sales to governments in developing nations, however. Negroponte claims that Intel is using misinformation and dumping product at a significant loss to stall OLPC's progress. He references that fact that OPLC uses competing processors from AMD and is taking a $220 loss on each sale. And he provided Leslie Stahl with a copy of a sales sheet Intel provided Nigerian educational leaders that makes questionable claims against its competitor.
I believe this fight in the low-cost laptop war parallels the history of the race to sequence the human genome. Both were efforts to improve the lives of billions of people and pitted a non-profit group against for-profit businesspeople.
As economist Gary Becker described in 2000, a private effort by Celera Genomics began 8 years after a global non-profit effort led by the National Institutes of Health. Celera embraced an innovative gene mapping strategy that moved at light speed compared with the global government-sponsored team. But the success of and competition from Celera "appeared to light a fire under the government's program." At the end of the day, the genetic code was cracked five years ahead of schedule, probably saving thousands of lives.
Ironically, the OPLC organization's first mission statement embraced competition, essentially saying that "we win as long as someone makes the right product":
"OLPC is not at heart a technology program and the XO is not a product in any conventional sense of the word. We are non-profit: constructionism is our goal; XO is our means of getting there. It is a very cool, even revolutionary machine, and we are very proud of it. But we would also be delighted if someone built something better, and at a lower price."
But the new mission eliminates an embrace of competitors. Anyone who has been through a mission project knows that these mission words come after endless discussions. Clearly OLPC has embraced competition rather than cooperation. It wants to win, not cede success to others.
I think this change of heart will work to OLPC's advantage. By becoming a hard-nosed competitor with a passion to win with its preferred strategy, OLPC is better tooled to go against the likes of Intel. On the other hand, I wish Negroponte would focus on making a better product, rather than accusing Intel of misdeeds. By winning with a better product, rather than better politics, Negroponte will beat Intel in a way that provides the best product for billions of poor children.
Let the war to provide for the world's poor children begin!
UPDATE: I missed it 6 months ago, but Intel ended up joining the OLPC group, promising to cooperate as one force, but potentially hurting the competition that would drive innovation. No problem, though, as last week Intel pulled out of the partnership. It seems that Intel wanted to continue selling its own version and OLPC was unhappy.
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