Negroponte Seeks a Laptop CEO

After weathering an acrimonious split from Intel and harsh criticism from critics, One Laptop Per Child is reorganizing—and looking for a CEO

By Steve Hamm

Nicholas Negroponte, founder and director of MIT's Media Lab. Adam Nadel/Polaris

Editor's note: This is an extended version of a story published in the Mar. 17, 2008, issue of BusinessWeek magazine.

Over the past two decades, multimedia pioneer and college professor Nicholas Negroponte has gained a reputation for producing outsize ideas. Chief among them was his goal of providing 150 million of the world's poorest children with inexpensive laptop computers by the end of this year through the One Laptop Per Child organization. But, with the group far short of his goal, Negroponte is looking for help in piloting OLPC. During an interview with BusinessWeek, he revealed publicly for the first time that he's searching for a chief executive while he continues in the role of chairman. He says the organization has been operating "almost like a terrorist group, doing almost impossible things" for three years. Now, he says, it needs to be managed "more like Microsoft."

The CEO search comes amid a retrenchment for the organization that Negroponte started three years ago. OLPC will hand more of the development and support of its XO laptop and its core software to technology companies, including Red Hat (RHT), the leading distributor of the Linux open-source operating system, and Microsoft (MSFT), which is just now putting the finishing touches on a version of Windows for the XO machine. OLPC will concentrate on developing prototypes and other new concepts. "In the end, we should not be in the hardware or software business. We should be in the learning business," says Negroponte, 64.

Rethinking the Process

The organization, which is based in Cambridge, Mass., in November began producing its XO laptops in China via a manufacturing partner. They initially cost $188, rather than the $100 Negroponte originally targeted. Pilot projects were conducted in two dozen countries, and, this month, the OLPC is beginning its first large-scale deployments of computers, including 240,000 in Peru and 110,000 in Uruguay. However, countries such as Libya, Nigeria, and Thailand, which had agreed early on to deploy the machines broadly, are now dialing back their efforts. The OLPC is backed by tech industry giants including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Google (GOOG).

The transition Negroponte revealed has already begun. In recent weeks, OLPC reorganized into four operating units, including technology, deployment, market development and fund-raising, and administration. In early January, the organization's co-founder and chief technology officer, Mary Lou Jepson, left to start her own company, Pixel Qi, with a goal of producing technologies for inexpensive laptop displays. "My job was simply done," she says. "I was responsible for the hardware, and I got it into mass production." She also says that working on a project like OLPC takes a toll. "The OLPC is like the Peace Corps. You go in for a couple of years, and it's really hard, but really rewarding."

Intel Breach Exposes Flaws

Running the organization became particularly hard for Negroponte in January with a vitriolic split between OLPC and one of its partners, chip giant Intel (INTC) After briefly becoming a member of the OLPC Assn., Intel abruptly withdrew, claiming it was pressured by OLPC to stop selling its own device aimed at students in poor nations, the Classmate PC. OLPC accused Intel of denigrating its XO laptop to leaders of governments. Intel denied it.