Leading with Conviction by Shalom Saada Saar

The competitive difference is not deciding what to do, but how to do it. / Execution becomes paramount. / -Larry Bossidy, former CEO of Honeywell

It was touted as the device that would revolutionize the delivery of education in the developing world. Founded by Nicholas Negroponte, the former director of MIT Media Lab, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) was designed to supply 150 million laptops to children in the Third World by the end of 2008. But just three years after its launch in 2005, OLPC fell woefully short of expectations, jeopardizing the initial plan. The price projections overshot initial estimates, the actual development of the software as well as the laptop took longer than expected, countries that had promised to procure the laptops in large quantities backed off, and competition became more aggressive. On another level, the product failed to take off as expected because the end users-children in the developing world-refused to use them. The laptop, as it turned out, was better suited for the developed world-it was out of sync with local realities.1 Negroponte, who has been legitimately heralded as a "digital visionary" and an "indefatigable leader,"2 had the right intentions and a high level of ambition. What he was unable to do, however, was translate his vision into reality.