Book Review | Learning to Change the World: The Social Impact of One Laptop per Child

Most organizations seeking to achieve social change focus on utilizing and directing human capital and resources toward solving social problems. One Laptop per Child (OLPC), however, is one of a few organizations which attempts to achieve social change through a product-driven model. In Learning to Change the World: The Social Impact of One Laptop per Child, international development and social change consultants Jody Cornish and Neal Donahue pair with OLPC’s Walter Bender and Charles Kane in an attempt to chronicle the story of OLPC from a critical perspective. In 2006, James Surowiecki wrote in an issue of Technology Review that a successful OLPC could “serve as a new model for getting the non-profit, private, and public sectors to work together efficiently and productively;” in essence, create a new type of “philanthropic machine.” Learning to Change the World attempts to make the case that OLPC can be the model for a new type of philanthropic social change. The authors aim to present OLPC as such a model through three key goals: telling what they believe is the success story of OLPC; providing the opportunity for social innovators and entrepreneurs to learn from OLPC’s successes and mistakes; and inspiring readers to become involved both in the work of OLPC and other social change initiatives.