Disruptive Leadership

Recently I participated in an online debate sponsored by Infodev and UNESCO on technology in education with Walter Bender, CEO of Sugar Labs, the non-profit organization that provides the software for the XO laptop of One Laptop Per Child.   The debate was focused on which model was better for schools in the developing world.  I am re-publishing my part of the debate here in two  parts.  This is part 2.

In Walter Bender’s post, For Real Learning, Mobility and Saturation Matter, one of his concluding statements was:

“I echo Dukker in being supportive of whatever means we can deploy to get great software into the hands of children, inexpensively.”

I completely agree.  Shared computing vs. 1:1 is a false dichotomy. Is it better for every student to have a computer at their fingers at school and at home? Absolutely. But pushing 1:1 as the short-term objective vs. long-term goal sets up unrealistic expectations with schools and governments that just don’t have the funding. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Recently I participated in an online debate sponsored by Infodev and UNESCO on technology in education with Walter Bender, CEO of Sugar Labs, the non-profit organization that provides the software for the XO laptop of One Laptop Per Child. The debate was focused on which model was better for schools in the developing world. I am re-publishing my part of the debate here in two  parts.

As Wayan appropriately points out in his opening post, a computer is merely a learning tool, albeit an increasingly important tool, in enabling higher quality education.  And as Walter Bender pointed out in the insightful WSJ debate (Will Low-Cost Laptops Help Kids in Developing Countries?) with the CEO of NComputing, Stephen Dukker, “… computing is not a cure; it is an agent that will enable children to engage in learning.”

So the debate we’ve been asked to participate in is to posit which computing model is better suited in the developing world to proliferate computers to enhance learning and education. [Read the rest of this entry...]

I guarantee that everybody reading this blog takes for granted the wealth of information at their fingertips. Looking for something? Google it.

But for the billions of people in the developing world that don’t even have a mobile phone, what do they do?

Last year at SoCAP ‘08 I met a young woman with an intriguing social venture called Open Mind. She had attended the panel I was hosting on ICT for Development and approached me after the session about a project called Question Box. Her name was Rose Shuman and she had an idea for a free telephone hotline service to bring information to those in the developing world with no access to a phone or computer. [Read the rest of this entry...]

As I mentioned in my last post: A Measure of Success,  I had asked Thomas Thurston to write an article for Disruptive Leadership giving further insights into his research on disruptive innovation.  He delivered faster than I expected. Enjoy.

One of the most shocking things I keep finding in disruption research (at least it’s shocking to me) is how little a new venture’s team, financials, geography, or industry seem to matter in predicting whether it will succeed or fail.  Disruption Theory doesn’t answer every question, and it continues to be refined.  Still, it seems to operate at a level of abstraction that supersedes a lot of details that most of us consider critical.

For the sake of argument, businesses can be categorized as having three primary components:  (1) strategy, (2) team, and (3) execution.  While all three are vital, the data has consistently demonstrated how, time and time again, if you get strategy wrong (in disruptive terms), you’re doomed (even with a great team and stellar execution).  That runs somewhat counter to the chestnet “bet on the jockey, not the horse.”  It also defies my old-school sales upbringing where the conventional wisdom was to always “prefer a bad strategy with good execution, over a good strategy with bad execution.”  Even today it can be hard for me to emotionally digest how good strategies with bad execution do, in fact, tend to fare  better than bad strategies with good execution.  Yet the data doesn’t care how I feel, and that’s a good thing.  This also shouldn’t stop any of us from trying to excel in all three categories. [Read the rest of this entry...]

One of the things that I love about blogging is meeting fascinating people that have a common interest in disruptive leadership topics. Last week Thomas Thurston got in touch with me after he read A Lesson Learned.  Thomas had also previously worked for Intel and was involved with some of the same emerging market projects.

The highlight of meeting Thomas was his story.  He created a model from Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation that could predict, with 85% accuracy, whether a business venture would succeed or fail.  His model caught the attention of Christensen himself at Harvard Business School (HBS), who asked Thomas to join him for a year at HBS, fully paid for by Intel.  Thomas then took that same model and used it to create a stock portfolio that is wildly successful (more on that later).

[Read the rest of this entry...]