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OLPC and the "Innovator's Opportunity"

Posted by kdawson on from the saturation-one-twenty dept.

viralMeme sends in a piece from OLPC News featuring a video interview with Pixel Qi's Mary Lou Jepson. The interview goes over some of the improvements in the company's extremely power-efficient screen technology that will show up in the next generations of the OLPC. The article links a video side-by-side comparison among Pixel Qi, Kindle, and Toshiba R600 displays in sunlight and in shade; Pixel Qi is arguably more readable than Kindle, and in full color. Jepson refers to Clayton Christenson's 1997 classic The Innovator's Dilemma, explaining a seeming paradox in high-tech: why companies that listen to their customers aren't the ones that innovate. According to the article it's mainly because "the next big market isn't with your current customers. It's with a vastly larger group of would-be users who couldn't afford your previous products, or couldn't carry around the huge devices of previous generations." Jepson says, "The cool thing about the Pixel Qi technology is, you know, poor kids in Africa got it first... It's the classic Innovator's Dilemma."

7 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Not a paradox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

    You listen to your customers because they mostly can't articulate what they want. But you do have to understand their needs.
    The OLPC is a stupid idea, because it's based on the assumption that the needs of poor kids in Africa are unique.

    The first company that realizes the obvious, and sticks a power efficient screen in an ergonomic form factor, ignores all Microsoft attacks and bribes to make it run 7, and makes it almost disposable cheap... ...will have a product that the whole world will stampede to buy.

    1. Re:Not a paradox by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yeah I disagree with the article's assertion you shouldn't listen to your customers. You should listen to your customers, but do so understanding most requests aren't for what they're asking for, it's for a more fundamental desire. And it's up to the innovator to determine what that is.

      "I want a faster horse." "So you want to be able to travel further faster?" "Yes." "Ok how about a cart that travels as fast as a horse and go several hundred miles without stopping to rest, would that satisfy your desires?"

      "I want a brighter backlight."
      "Why do you think you need a brighter backlight?"
      "Because I can't see the screen in direct sun."
      "Ok would a screen which reflects light and is readable in all lighting conditions satisfy that need?"

      It's always helpful to deconstruct your customer's or client's feedback into outcomes or objectives instead of technical specifications. And if they ask for something specific it's usually a good idea to define whether they really want that in specific thing or there is some specific attribute of that thing that think is unique to it.

    2. Re:Not a paradox by abigsmurf · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Can we drop the whole 'microsoft killed the OLPC' thing? The more extreme OSS advocates did far more damage to the devices success than MS ever did with their belief that making a device as Open source as possible (apparently Africa is full of 10 year old kernel programmers) was far more important than getting it into the hands of as many kids as possible. The second signs were shown that having the device open source played second fiddle to more important concerns, the device was viciously attacked by these people.

      People in the west were screaming to buy this product but negroponte refused to sell it to the west. Selling them at a slight markup could have funded charitable donations, as well as drive the prices down. When he did offer it for sale, it was with a stupid 100% markup for which you could, by then buy a much more powerful eeepc and have money left over.

  2. Does anyone really actually give a shit about this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    anymore? In the classic Innovator's Opportunity, netbooks have pretty much rendered this thing completely useless. They do pretty much the same thing(are actually better in some areas), for about the same price, sans all the smugness.

  3. If only we could get these with a decent CPU... by mellon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One of these screens with a low-power ARM CPU motherboard would be a really sweet geek laptop. It seems like that could hit a price that would be attractive to a lot of people while performing well enough to actually be useful. But all we're hearing from Pixel Qi at the moment is silence, and I'm betting the first laptop to come with this screen, if one ever does, will have an Atom CPU and run Windows. I wonder if Pixel Qi would be willing to sell these in hobbyist quantities... :'}

  4. PixelQi isn't (just) about OLPC by schwaang · · Score: 4, Informative

    According to the interview, Pixel Qi are still supporting OLPC, but they aren't designing just for -- or even primarily for OLPC any longer. It is neat that kids in Africa were the first market for the new display technology, but we're going to see the newer Pixel Qi stuff in commercial netbooks long before the XO-2 is out, most likely.

    The newest stuff does full color in direct sun, and apparently the generation after this will cut power consumption by a bunch.

  5. Hard figures by abigsmurf · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've read lots of vague new stories about this over the past few months and seen lots of videos but I'd like them to just release some proper technical specs without having to parse a collection of transcribed press releases and watch dull 10 minute videos.

    how much exactly does a screen cost at each size?
    Resolution at each size or DPI?
    response time?
    Power usage in W?