‘One Laptop’ Seeks New Leadership

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Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 3/17/2008 12:29:00 PM

Fueled by its breakup with Intel and other hitches impacting its primary goal to supply $100 laptops to children in underdeveloped nations, One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is undergoing a restructuring of sorts.
For starters, the three-year-old nonprofit is searching for a new CEO—but that doesn’t mean that founder Nicholas Negroponte is jumping ship. “Nicholas will still be in charge, but we find there is a need for another managerial role,” wrote David Cavallo, chief learning architect for OLPC, by email.
A new leadership structure may be needed now that OLPC is pulling back from its original mission to design, manufacture, and distribute low-cost laptop computers to underserved countries like Peru, India, and Mongolia. Instead, its new focus will primarily be to help countries use its XO laptops effectively for learning and development, Cavallo wrote. 
While OLPC declined to comment on the reasons for the CEO search, there’s no question that controversy has swirled around the project. There’s its continued inability to reach the $100 price point Negroponte had touted as the selling price for its XO laptop, delays in delivery to donors from its Give One, Get One program last winter, as well as competition from other companies that have jumped into the low-cost laptop game. 
Yet, despite these issues, Negroponte has fueled a global conversation about the need for affordable computers—reaching technological parity can be life changing, and infinitely possible, one laptop at a time. 
“The overall goal is a more equitable, more peaceful world through providing more equitable, higher quality educational opportunities for all,” wrote Cavallo. “The laptop is a powerful means towards this.”