Diamond Age

My strategic marketing class began this past Monday with a discussion of Vincent Negroponte's plan to deliver laptops to every child on the planet. It immediately is striking as a bold enterprise, and one with great promise. Neal Stephenson's excellent book, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, raises a good question- ie whether providing raw resources through digital mediums can act as a surrogate teacher.

I'm more concerned with whether or not a non-profit or a for-profit company is better equipped to meet this global need. Negroponte was able to deliver a groundbreaking prototype - which you can buy through a "get one, give one" system similar to Tom's shoes offerings - mainly because the legitimacy of a non-profit allowed the company to draw upon open-source design. Are non-profits able to drive paradigm change faster than their capitalist competitors?