Reflection from Scaling Social Entrepreneurship: Lessons Learned from One Laptop per Child
Essay written for my Honors Global Learning Course Social Entrepreneurship
The book “Scaling Social Entrepreneurship: Lessons Learned from One Laptop per Child” by Bob Hacker narrates the challenges and learnings the author had as the Chief Financial Officer of the company One Laptop per Child. This company, which was born at MIT’s Media Lab, is a social enterprise, meaning that they were a scalable enterprise dedicated to solve a social problem. In this case, the social problem is education. One Laptop per Child, or OLPC, aims to provide children with low-cost laptops, enlightening education in low-income communities.
My main takeaways from the book were the following: the importance of networking, how entrepreneurship acts as a tool to solve problems, and how social entrepreneurs can have an impact in the landscapes of universities. Moreover, it helped me understand how to create impact on a larger scale and how social entrepreneurs should interact with the government.
On the very first pages, the importance of networking in entrepreneurship becomes apparent. Robert Hacker talks about how he developed One Laptop Per Child. He names many people that encouraged him to write the book, but more importantly, he mentions those who invited him to join the project. He names renowned people from MIT Media Lab who helped him, and many friends who read his book before publishing. This reinforced the notion that we need to make our networks strong because they are the ones who are going to bring us new, life changing opportunities, and help us when we need solid and well-rounded advice and support.
The next take away was the notion of entrepreneurship as a problem solving tool. Through his analysis I was able to understand how and why I was made to pursue a career in this field. When I graduated from high school, I wanted to work in a creative advertising agency because I wanted to help brands bring new solutions to their customers to increase their revenue. Then, I changed my major to Digital Media Communications, with the theory that I needed to understand the digital platforms to have a better perspective of the future. As a junior in college, I discovered the power of creating businesses, and instead of helping businesses from the outside, create value for the consumer from the very beginning. By my senior year, I changed my major again in order to pursue a major that allowed me to explore different fields that are going to make me a more knowledgeable person at the time I start my own business or help others to do so.
When Hacker mentions that one of the social entrepreneurship venture (SEV) allies should be universities, it made me reflect about the impact that this partnership can have. By reaching out to students and professors, the SEV can generate new topics of research, inspire younger people to pursue ventures like this one, and make the recruiting pipeline more effective. It can also serve as a source of income, since the philanthropic work is very active in educational institutions. Moreover, it would also help the company to create another layer of social impact. Schools can be the platform for product testing and launching, for example.
The last two points that became takeaways, and that are highlights in the book, are scale and government factors. One quote that I think is very interesting is the following: “large problems have a larger market opportunity.” When I read it, it was funny to realize that we have been educated to look at “niches” because they will “sell better.” Another great point is that large corporations can eliminate costs. This fact made me think about how much criticism large corporations are under today and how we aim to help small businesses, while we should be working to have local action with global impact. Regarding the relationship with government, I think Hacker establishes disruptive thoughts. He says that “[we have to] realize that the government is not the default solution provider for social problems.” And I asked myself: does everyone thinks like this? For example, in my home country Argentina, there is a huge amount of people that rely on the government’s subsidies to live. But how does this affect the rest of the economy? How does that encourage progress for the country as a whole?
Edits by: Nicole Duggan
Edits by Nicole Duggan