How ‘Designing for good’ is profitable
Do the math: one laptop per child, almost a million children. Even though the profit margin is relatively tight due to its non-profit policy, when managing these huge cuantities of production and sales that ‘tight’ margin enlarges proportionally to the size of the project. Without judging the decision of staying as non-profit, I want to recognize the audacity of concieving a project based on the people and not in money. Sure, financial sustainability is required, but it must not be the primary objective of a company or product, but it should come as the result of concieving projects with the vision to positively change the lives of people, without requiring them to pay a single cent. This social-oriented projects are only financially successful when any of two business models are applied: you may well, as OLPC, charge the price (low) to organizations that are capable of financing these projects or by developing a product destined to ‘the base of the piramid’. The importance of understanding the potential of these projects is not a call for charity, but to understand that orienting projects and companies towards people may be as profitable (if not more) than other ortientations; this vision was recogniced by many Indian entrepreneurs who have earned millions in the base of the pyramid, and it may be the option of shifting wealth in developing countries.
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