The recent lecture of the lecture series ‘Conversations with art and science’ at SAIC was given by Nicholas Negroponte.
Who is Nicholas Negroponte???
well for those who don’t know him he is kinda the Picasso of the ‘art and tech’ world. The one who initiated the one laptop per child program and he is the founding brain behind MIT media labs (that’s why I called him Picasso).
The lecture was mainly on his entrepreneurial journey of ‘one laptop per child program’, how he went about in doing it, the challenges he met, his failures and the future of that entrepreneurship program. He talked about computer is the marriage of art and science. He also talked about the history of MIT media lab sprinkled with anecdotes of how critics mocked the experiments conducted at MIT labs in 1980s and Steve jobs & other visionaries, identifying their potential, supported them.
The thought provoking topic he touched as an entrepreneur was defining the difference between a market and a mission. We can’t cater the needs of both the worlds: profit and non profit sector (that are like north and south poles). This is an important aspect, of classifying your business idea early on and whatever choice we make it doesn’t matter.
If your business idea is gonna save the world you’ll be the SuperMan, GREAT!!! If its gonna save the stock market and you’ll be the Steve Jobs(indirectly Superman).
PS: Today’s world is driven by stock market. But being batman is an option that doesn’t exist. (According Mr. Negroponte’s theory)
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