In March 2010, the One Laptop per Child Association will be gathering over 300 of the world’s best and brightest young MBA, graduate and undergraduate business minds. These students will develop strategies for leveraging leading-edge technologies to educate and empower the world’s poorest children.
After hearing OLPC President Chuck Kane give a presentation at Hult Business School, Ahmad Ashkar, Nabil Chaachou, and Jose Escobar came up with an idea to have a Global Case Competition that leverages technology and the ability to crowdsource ideas from a global landscape.  After hearing about the challenges currently faced by OLPC, the Hult team felt the only viable solution to solve the international scope of the problem had to come from sources worldwide. The team hopes the case competition will provide a platform for the world’s students to come together and solve a global social issue. By soliciting innovative solutions from students from every corner of the world, we can empower any social non-profit to help them accomplish their goals. This year’s Global Case Competition is planned as the first in a series of annual competitions, and the Hult Team is already speaking to other NGO’s and non-proifts who might partake in next year’s event.
The Case Challenge will be hosted in 4 locations: Boston, Dubai, London, and Shanghai. Â As of today, GCC is accepting applications from around the world.
About the founding team: Ahmad specializes in strategic positioning and strategy; Nabil has
experience in the economics of the MENA region and is a published writer; and Jose has a background in engineering.
It is an excellent initiative that could lead to furthering the OLPC mission. Though crowdsourcing has been used successfully in other sectors such as pharma and manufacturing, I don’t think it has been used in the social/NGO space. If it succeeds, this could be one of many such initiatives in the near future.
Way too much name dropping in the 2nd paragraph (and then AGAIN in the last paragraph) don’t you think?