requires a significant change in pedagogy and that might reduce teacher
status.b Even when the laptops are adopted, they are not always used as envisioned by OLPC or by education ministers. One Peruvian teacher said, “The
ministry would want us to use the laptop every day for long periods of time.
But we have decided to set rules in our
school and, really, the laptop, it’s only
a tool for us.”
10
Such resistance is no surprise to
students of innovation diffusion or of
IT for development. Rogers18 pointed
to examples where innovation diffusion failed due to cultural norms
and the effects of such innovation on
existing institutional arrangements.
Avgerou2 noted that attitudes toward
hierarchy are particularly problematic
in developing countries. An example
illustrating both themes is that the Peruvian experiment was initiated without being explained to the national
teachers’ union.
10 OLPC has strong
support from the Peruvian Education
Ministry, but ultimately teachers must
actually use the machines in the classroom, and they are likely to see the
union as an ally while possibly mistrusting the ministry.
The fact that OLPC was much stronger in developing innovative technology than in understanding how to
diffuse it may reflect the engineering
orientation of the organization and its
lack of understanding of the needs or
interests of the nontechnical people
who will ultimately buy and use the innovation. This is illustrated by David
Cavallo, OLPC’s chief education architect, saying, “We’re hoping that these
countries won’t just make up ground
but will jump into a new educational
environment.”
9 Expecting a laptop
to cause such revolutionary change
showed a degree of naiveté, even for an
organization with the best intentions
and smartest people.
PhotograPh by mike Lee
Competitive Response
from the PC industry
The OLPC project was a potential threat
to the PC industry in emerging markets.
OLPC’s use of an AMD microprocessor
and Linux operating system was a potential threat to the dominant position
and historically high profit margins
of Intel and Microsoft. Its targeting
of a new market (developing-country
XO features.
indicator Light
microphone
usB Port
speaker
antennae
Directional Pad
screen Rotate
storage access
Wi-fi access
indicator Light
Camera
usB Ports
speaker
Game Buttons
Battery Light
Power Button
Power Light
sD slot
stylus area/
touch Pad
mouse Buttons
Latch
schools) that existing PC makers were
not serving raised the prospect that
OLPC might gain a foothold in emerging markets more generally. Moreover,
the XO’s ultra-low price raised the likelihood of a new price point for notebooks, potentially forcing PC makers
to cannibalize existing low-end products in order to compete (and is what
ultimately happened).
Branded PC makers have always
faced competition from cheap local
brands and clone makers in developing countries, but OLPC threatened
to grab a share of education budgets
worldwide that PC makers hoped to
tap for themselves. Negroponte’s high-profile announcement of the project
and the publicity he garnered quickly
caught the industry’s attention.
Leading companies first responded
by disparaging the XO as a useless toy.
Intel’s Craig Barrett called it “a gadget,”
saying people want the full functionality of a PC. Bill Gates said “...geez, get
17
a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you’re not sitting
there cranking the thing while you’re
trying to type.”
11 Before long, however,
the industry began to respond with action, not just words.
In 2006, Intel introduced a small
laptop—the Classmate—for developing countries that today sells for
$230–$300. Intel has since licensed the
Classmate reference design to PC makers to manufacture and distribute and
is marketing it aggressively against the
XO worldwide. It secured deals to sell
hundreds of thousands of Classmates
in Libya, Nigeria, and Pakistan, some
of the very countries OLPC was counting on. Intel launched a series of pilot
projects in these countries, saying it
will also test the Classmate in at least
22 others while donating thousands of
machines.
21 Intel briefly joined OLPC
in July 2007 but got into a nondispar-agement dispute with Negroponte and
dropped out only seven months later.
14
In 2007, Microsoft offered to make
available Windows, a student version
of Microsoft Office, and educational
programs to developing countries for
$3 per copy when used on computers
in schools. OLPC then decided to allow
Windows on the XO, a choice driven by
demands from some governments for
Windows-based PCs. Even in countries
with very low levels of PC penetration,
officials who make purchasing decisions may favor a technology standard
(the Wintel design) they are familiar
with or believe children must learn on
systems they will encounter later in the
work force.
The OLPC project also stimulated
innovation in low-cost, low-power PCs.
Seeing OLPC’s success in developing
a sub-$200 notebook, Asustek introduced the EeePC notebook in 2007 for
the educational and consumer markets in both developed and developing
countries, selling more than 300,000