Marketing a $ 100 Laptop

$100 Laptop: The idea

 Vision born from what Negroponte saw in Cambodia.
 An affordable & usable PC for children and their families in less developed
countries.
 Attracting the attention of the world in forums like UN and WEF.
 Selling the concept:
 Trading off unmet needs such as health , hygiene, and sanitation with laptop
based education.
 What can the $ 100 laptop do:
 Change the way the child learns
 Content and usage will follow.
 Not just teachers, but also peer-based learning.
 Family can use it for checking information on weather, crop prices etc.
 Will laptop replace the books?
 Create a new consumer computing platform away from the “wintel”
paradigm.

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Challenges
 Can non-profits address the needs unmet by for-profits?
 OLPC- Is there too much focus on the child and not enough on other key
stakeholders?
 Time lost
 Limited its initial success.
 OLPC struggle to sell the concept:
 Trading off early visibility with high expectations
 Technology based challenges:
 Cost
 Making the product rugged.
 Power
 Open source network-based collaborative product development.
 Marketing challenges:
 Managing public perception about the mission of the project.
 Price sensitivity of the local governments.
 Threat of competitors.

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Meeting the challenges
 Being non-profit venture increased credibility, and open government
doors.
 Also made negotiations with other stakeholder easy.
 Other challenges:
 Resistance from experts and their “proven models” of education
where training teachers is more effective than using laptops.
 Where is the proof of the concept?
 Can Negroponte wait for years to show this proof of concept?
 Selling untested technology to politicians is not easy.
 Selling to governments:
 Who is the customer-Politicians/ministers or the bureaucrats?
 Corruption and inefficiency in the government processes.
 Government buying cycles are very long, and that can delay the
achievement of scales, and hence the price drop will not happen in near
future.

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Alternatives
 Should Negroponte license the concept?
 Should he form alliances with more competitors?
 Should he sell to buyers other than governments?
 Understanding your markers correctly?
 Is it BOP or near “close to BOP”?
 “Next Billion” customers or the “last billion”?
 Are you in the education business or in the laptop business?
 Intel got it right.
 Should Media Lab collaborate with Intel?

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