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What Did Google Really Say?

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Especially over the last week or so, one of the big topics of discussion across the mobile ecosystem has been that Google finally confirmed that they DO plan to launch some kind of wireless MVNO. Over the next few days, I’d like to share my perspectives on this news, starting this morning with a quick review of what was actually said and what I think was noteworthy about those statements.

Last week, Sundar Pichai gave a keynote speech at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. In his speech, he talked about Google’s core services, then about Android, but he spent most of his time talking about connectivity – Google Fiber, Project Link, Project Loon, and Project Titan. Then he sat down for a 20 minute interview with Bloomberg Businessweek’s Brad Stone.

For the first 10 minutes, Stone tossed him softball questions, mostly about Android. Then Stone said “There have been reports in the press that Google is talking to wireless carriers about a Google branded network, also called an MVNO, what can you tell us about those talks?” For the next four minutes, they went back and forth on this topic.

Obviously Pichai was ready for the question and started with a well crafted response. Interestingly, he went back to Android, and then he talked about Google’s Nexus devices before he ever got around to talking about their MVNO plans. In fact, at the end of his Android/Nexus discussion he said “That’s the context in which we are thinking about it.”

I’ll talk more about Android and Nexus in a future post, but I think the key points that he made about these as setting the context for Google’s MVNO plans are:

  • That Android has always been an ecosystem play, working with partners.
  • When they introduced Nexus, they did it in partnership with OEM partners.
  • They are very cautious to not compete with their OEM partners, and part of that, he said, was doing Nexus at a scale large enough to have an impact, but small enough to not be threatening to OEMs.
  • Google always tries to push the boundary of what’s next. He said that all innovations in computing happen at the intersection of hardware and software, and that Google felt they needed to do Nexus so that they could work very closely with both the hardware and software in order to push the innovation.
  • He made the case that “we are at a stage where it’s important to think about hardware, software, and connectivity together” – they want to experiment at that intersection, just as they have with the intersection of just hardware and software.

With that as context, Pichai then provided a little more (but not much) information about their plans, mostly within the context that he had already set:

  • They clearly don’t want to mess up their carrier relationships. He wanted to clearly communicate that their intent is NOT to compete with the carriers, but to experiment in order to “help” them.
  • Google is working with carrier partners for this project. The carrier partners will actually provide the service. (BTW – that could mean a few different things, which I’ll get to in a future post.)
  • They will operate this at large enough scale that people will see whether the experiments work (and hopefully carriers will adopt the ideas), but still at small scale so it won’t be a threat to carriers.

Stone specifically asked if this was about “more innovation and lower prices when it comes to mobile networks” and Pichai’s response was that Google is trying to accomplish something a bit different. He then gave a couple of examples:

  • Making the experience seamless for WiFi and cellular network interoperability.
  • Automatically reconnecting a call when it drops.

Both of these examples seem to imply a traditional smartphone use case, but earlier he had specifically pointed to IoT examples such as a connected watch or Android Auto and said that they want to be able to experiment along those lines.

That’s what Google really said. Over the next few posts, I’ll try to translate that into what might be meaningful from that for the industry.

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Zoomin Market Revolutionizing Grocery Shopping

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This week, in my Kauffman FastTrac class, our guest speakers were John Yerkes and Matt Rider, the founders of Zoomin Market. John literally grew up in the grocery industry, while Matt cut his teeth optimizing and redefining logistics and reverse logistics processes for multiple companies across the wireless industry ecosystem. Together, they saw the opportunity to fundamentally redefine how Americans shop for groceries.

While drive-in grocery stores are popular in Europe, Zoomin is the first drive-in grocery store in the United States, and it’s all enabled by mobile technology. The disruptive threat is so significant that WalMart has been watching the company’s every step.

So, what is a drive-in grocery store? The process is fairly simple. You shop online, filling your virtual cart with groceries. You pick a time you want to pick them up, then you complete the transaction and drive to the store. A server brings your groceries to your car and, in minutes, you’re on the way home.

For Zoomin, more than half of their orders are coming from mobile devices, and all of their employees are using tablets to fulfill the orders. Like any grocery store, Zoomin has four environmental zones for foods ranging from frozen to fresh produce, but unlike walk-in stores, the company doesn’t need to keep shelves over-stocked and decorated to appeal to the shoppers eye. They’ve studied Amazon’s stocking system for efficiency (Matt says “let the geniuses be geniuses” and focus on what you’re great at). They use the same wholesalers as their traditional competitors, so their selection and their cost of goods are comparable. However, they can operate in a much smaller building, with much less inventory, and significantly fewer employees than the stores they’re competing against. They’ve chosen to price competitively with no pickup fees (unlike European companies), using their cost advantage to drive richer margins.

Speaking of employees, company culture is very important to both John and Matt. Delighting customers is important to them and they gave a number of examples, from surprising a customer with a product she wanted and didn’t think they had (for free), to greeting the dog of a regular customer with his favorite treat (set aside just for him) each time they pull in for their pickup. All of this, of course, is enabled by the mobile technology that makes it easy for employees to make notes so that each time you pull in they know you better and can serve you better. When asked about their hiring practices, John smiled and explained that they hire “pickers” and “grinners.” “Pickers” are detail oriented perfectionists who make sure that the order is filled correctly and with the quality that delights customers. “Grinners” deliver the order to the customers and establish that strong connection that makes them feel special and appreciated. But to fit in to the Zoomin culture, all the employees have to know how to have fun!

I happened to have a meeting near their store on Tuesday, so I set my wife up with their website and offered to pick up her groceries. She found it easy to place the order. If you want to get your food as quickly as possible, Zoomin says it will be ready in 30 minutes, but we picked a future timeslot after my meeting and I got a notification well in advance that everything was ready whenever I could arrive. When you pull in to Zoomin, you either text them to let them know you’ve arrived, or you enter your 5 digit order code to a touch screen kiosk. Either way, you are then assigned one of the 10 covered pull-through stalls. One of the Zoomin staff rolls out a cart with your shopping bags and loads your car for you, and you are on your way. John and Matt said that the average in and out time for customers is about two and a half minutes. Because of that, the store is drawing customers from a much broader geography than a typical grocery store (customers trading dramatically less time in the store for a little more driving time).

In class, I had asked John and Matt about produce. They said they love that question because everyone’s first reaction is that you’ll never buy produce that you can’t pick yourself. In reality, produce is their top selling category, so in our order, we bought a lot of produce. My wife loved the fact that she could order bananas as either green, ripe, or spotty and she could order avocados as ripe or firm. Most of what we got was fine, but some of the items, although not technically “bad” – probably are different from what we would have picked. (For example, we bought a potato and what we got was the biggest potato I’ve ever seen – a bargain since the price was 79 cents no matter the size – but actually almost a bit scary and not one we would’ve picked.) Also, when the groceries were brought to my car, the Zoomin employee explained that when they went to pull the white organic mushrooms that my wife ordered, they didn’t look good, so they could instead give us white non-organic (and credit the price difference) or brown organic ones instead. I picked the brown ones – and proved that even when I’m just picking up the groceries, I can still buy the wrong item. 🙂 Which reminds me of another of the benefits that reviewers have identified with Zoomin – the elimination of impulse buying of unneeded items. (Ever since our son and I came home with the purple mustard and green ketchup that we thought was so cool, my wife has hesitated to send us to the store together…)

But back to how disruptive this concept can be to the grocery industry. As I mentioned above, Zoomin’s costs are dramatically lower than their competitors in key areas (real estate, inventory, head count). In Europe, many retailers have had to add a drive-in option for their customers, but this requires them to ADD to their building and hire MORE employees, while still maintaining all of the costs for their continuing traditional customers. If this model is successful in the U.S., it will be hard for existing grocers to respond. Which explains why WalMart is so interested in what Zoomin is up to. The week they opened, a handful of WalMart executives showed up with hopes of studying their operation (John and Matt met with them in the church next door instead). A few months later they found a local engineer poking around outside of their building with a clipboard and flashlight. He said that WalMart had hired him to figure out how Zoomin had implemented their refrigeration system. Last Fall, WalMart opened a test concept drive-in store in Bentonville, Arkansas.

It seems to me that John and Matt have thoughtfully implemented a defensible strategy. Convenience, friendliness, and a dramatically better cost structure will be tough, even for WalMart, to match.

If you want to try out Zoomin, be sure to use the coupon code FIRSTZOOM to save $5 off your first order.

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Net Neutrality: The Anguish of Mediocrity

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It is rare for me to be on the same side of an issue as AT&T and Verizon and on the opposite side of Sprint and T-Mobile, but I think the new Net Neutrality rules that the FCC adopted this week are a mistake that will hurt consumers and the telecom industry.

I won’t take the time to go point-by-point through the various elements of the new rules. Plenty of people smarter than me on regulatory topics have written about that elsewhere. The two aspects that really have me concerned are:

  1. the inability to prioritize paid traffic
  2. the inability to impair or degrade traffic based on content, applications, etc.

I believe that these restrictions will lead to networks that will perform much more poorly than they need to.

The Importance of Prioritization

Thirteen years ago, while I was chief strategist for TeleChoice, I wrote a whitepaper using some tools that we had developed to evaluate the cost to build a network to handle the traffic that would be generated by increasingly fast broadband access networks.

In the paper I say “ATM, Frame Relay, and now MPLS have enabled carriers to have their customers prioritize traffic, which in turn gives the carriers more options in sizing their networks, however, customers have failed to seriously confront properly categorizing their traffic. There has been no need to because there was no penalty for just saying ‘It’s all important.’”

With the new rules, the FCC ensures that this will continue to be the case.

Think about it. If you live in a city that suffers from heavy highway traffic, if you’re sitting in slow traffic and you see a few cars zipping along in the HOV lane, don’t you wish you were allowed into that lane? Of course you do. Hopefully it even gets you to consider making the change necessary to use that lane. Why do HOV lanes even exist? Because it was deemed a positive outcome for everyone if more people would carpool to reduce the overall traffic. Reducing overall traffic would have many benefits including reducing the amount of money needed to be spent to make the highway big enough to handle the traffic and at the same time improving the highway experience for all travelers.

Continuing the analogy, if you’re sitting in slow traffic and you see an ambulance with its lights flashing driving up the shoulder to get a patient to the hospital, do you consider it an unfair use of highway resources that you aren’t allowed to use yourself? Hopefully not. You recognize that this is a particular use case that requires different handling.

Finally, extending the analogy one more time, as you’re sitting in that traffic (on a free highway) and you look over and see traffic zipping along on the expensive toll road that parallels the free highway, do you consider whether you can afford to switch to the toll road? I bet you at least think about it.

Analogies always break down at some point, so let me transition into explaining the problem that the new rules impose on all of us. Networks, like highways, have to be built with enough capacity to provide an acceptable level of service during peak traffic. Data access networks, unlike highways, have traffic levels that are very dynamic with sudden spikes and troughs that last seconds or less. While all telecommunications networks have predictable busy hour patterns, just like highways, unlike highways, the network user experience can be dramatically impacted by a sudden influx of traffic. This requires network operators to build enough capacity to handle the peak seconds and peak minutes reasonably well rather than just the peak hour.

Different network applications respond differently to network congestion. An e-mail that arrives in 30 seconds instead of 20 seconds will rarely (if ever) be noticed. A web page that loads in 5 seconds instead of 4 seconds will be easily forgiven. Video streaming of recorded content can be buffered to handle reasonable variations in network performance. But if a voice or video packet during a live conversation is delayed a few seconds, it can dramatically impact the user experience.

Thirteen years ago, I argued that failing to provide the right incentives for prioritizing traffic to take into account these differences could require 40% more investment in network capacity than if prioritization were enabled. In an industry that spends tens of billions of dollars each year in capacity, that’s a lot of money.

Why The New Rules Hurt Consumers and the Industry

Is the industry going to continue to invest in capacity? Yes. But the amount of revenue they can get from that capacity will place natural limits on how much investment they will make. And, without prioritization, for any given level of network investment, the experience that the user enjoys will be dramatically less acceptable than it could be.

Let’s just quickly look at the two approaches to prioritization I called out above that the new rules block.

Paid prioritization is a business mechanism for ensuring that end applications have the right performance to create the value implied by the end service provider. This is the toll road analogy, but probably a better analogy is when a supplier chooses to ship via air, train, truck, or ship. If what I’m promising is fresh seafood, I’d better put it on an airplane. If what I’m promising is inexpensive canned goods with a shelf life of years, I will choose the least expensive shipping method. Paid prioritization enables some service providers (e.g. Netflix or Skype) to offer a level of service that customers value and are willing to pay for that requires better than mediocre network performance, and for the service provider to pay for that better network performance to ensure that their customers get what they expect. The service provider (e.g. Netflix or Skype) builds their business model balancing the revenue from their customers with the cost of offering the service. This approach provides additional revenue to the network operators enabling them to invest in more capacity that benefits all customers.

Impairing or degrading traffic based on content or application is a technical mechanism that enables the network to handle traffic differently based on the performance requirements of the content or application. An e-mail can be delayed a few seconds so that a voice or video call can be handled without delay. This allows the capacity in the network to provide an optimized experience for all users.

Obviously, these mechanisms provide opportunities for abuse by the network operators, but to forbid them outright, I believe, is damaging to the industry and to consumers, and a mistake.

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10 Strategic Issues Facing Mobile Operators

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In a recent consulting engagement, I was asked about the strategic issues facing U.S. mobile operators. I think I answered reasonably well, but it made me realize that the topic deserved a more thoughtful updating based on recent activities. With that in mind, I’d like to provide a high level outline of what I think are the biggest issues. I think each of these could be a future article in and of themselves.

1. Duopoly, The Rule of Three, or the Rule of Four
Perhaps the biggest strategic issue being played out right now is one of industry structure. Each quarter, Verizon and AT&T become stronger. Their strong balance sheets, fueled by rich cash flows, enable them to strengthen their hand. Meanwhile, the other two national operators (Sprint and T-Mobile) fight it out for third place. The Rule of Three claims that any market can only support three large generalists, implying that only one of those two can survive. Boston Consulting Group takes it a step further with their Rule of Four implying that perhaps two is the right number. American regulators would apparently block a combination of Sprint and T-Mobile, believing that a market with four competitors is better for consumers than a market with three competitors. But, in the long run, will that ultimately result in the failure of both #3 and #4, and in the short run, will it cause behaviors that damage the entire industry?

2. Wildcards: Google, Dish, América Móvil
Over the past few years, Google has done an admirable job of shaking up the broadband industry with the introduction of Google Fiber. In markets where the company has announced plans to build out local infrastructure, existing competitors have had to respond with improved offers to customers. Now, Google is rumored to be preparing to offer wireless services. Would they have a similar impact on the wireless competitive space, or are the disruptive moves already being introduced by T-Mobile and Sprint significant enough that Google’s impact would be muted? Meanwhile, Dish Networks has been spending tens of $billions accumulating a rich treasure chest full of spectrum which they are obligated to begin building out for wireless services. What will they do and how will that impact the competitive environment? Finally, América Móvil has spent the past few years preparing for a major global strategic shift. They already have a strong foothold in the U.S. prepaid market as an MVNO (TracFone), but their relationship with AT&T has been significantly altered perhaps positioning them for a more aggressive move into the U.S. Any of these three potential new entrants could have significant impacts on the American mobile market and must factor into the strategic scenarios for the four mobile operators.

3. Licensed versus Unlicensed Spectrum
As we’ll discuss more below, spectrum is the lifeblood of any wireless network. The global mobile industry has been built on licensed spectrum. Licensed spectrum has many advantages over unlicensed spectrum, including the ability to use higher power radios with better signal-to-noise resulting in greater range, throughput, and performance. Lack of unmanaged contention for the airwaves results in predictable and manageable performance, all resulting in higher reliability of each connection. The industry has invested hundreds of $billions to build out networks that provide a wireless signal for the vast majority of the U.S. However, the cost to build out a wireless network with unlicensed spectrum is a small fraction of that to build with licensed. Companies offering services with unlicensed spectrum are also unburdened by the regulatory requirements placed on Commercial Mobile Radio Service operators. The Cable MSOs have been most aggressive in shifting their focus from licensed to unlicensed spectrum. After decades of positioning to participate in the traditional cellular industry (winning spectrum in auctions, investing in Clearwire, partnering with Sprint, etc.), in 2012 Comcast, Time Warner, and others sold their licensed spectrum to Verizon and aggressively started building out a nationwide WiFi footprint using unlicensed spectrum. About a month ago, Cablevision introduced their Freewheel WiFi-based smartphone service to compete with mobile operators. Expect others to follow.

4. Spectrum Portfolio
Although mobile operators are toying with unlicensed spectrum, their strategies remain very centered on licensed spectrum. To effectively meet the growing demand for capacity, all operators will need more spectrum of some kind. However, not all spectrum is equal and operators know they need a balanced portfolio. There are a variety of criteria that factor into the attractiveness and utility of any given spectrum, but the easiest to understand is simply whether the spectrum is low-band, mid-band, or high-band. Low-band spectrum has a frequency less than 1GHz and provides the best geographic coverage (the signal travels farther) and in-building penetration (the signal passes more easily through walls). However, at these lower frequencies, there tends to be less spectrum available, and it has generally been made available in smaller channels, limiting the capacity (the amount of bandwidth that can be delivered to customers). High-band spectrum generally has a frequency above about 2.1GHz and, while it lacks the coverage of low-band spectrum, there’s generally more of it and it generally comes in larger channels providing lots of capacity. Mid-band spectrum (between 1GHz and 2.1GHz) provides a compromise – reasonable (but not outstanding) capacity with reasonable (but not outstanding) coverage. In the early 1980s, as the local telephone monopolies covering most of the country, Verizon and AT&T received free 800MHz low-band spectrum in each market they served. In 2008, the FCC auctioned off 700MHz low-band spectrum. Of the national players, only Verizon and AT&T had deep enough pockets to compete and walked away with strengthened low-band spectrum positions. Today, these two have the vast majority of low-band spectrum and T-Mobile and Sprint are hoping that the 2016 600MHz incentive auction will help them begin to balance their portfolios and are demanding that the FCC enact rules to avoid another Verizon/AT&T dominated auction process. All players have reasonable amounts of mid-band spectrum (with AT&T and Verizon again using their strong balance sheets to further strengthen their positions in the recent AWS auctions). The majority of Sprint’s spectrum is high-band 2.5GHz spectrum.

5. Network Technologies
Mobile operators face a number of strategic decisions over the next few years related to network technologies. There are enough uncertainties around the key decisions that each operator has a slightly different strategy. Two of the biggest decisions relate to small cell deployments and migration to Voice over LTE (VoLTE). AT&T has the most comprehensive strategy which revolves around their broader Velocity IP (VIP) Project, which they hope will free them from much of the regulatory oversight they currently endure in their monopoly wireline footprint and therefore provides tremendous financial incentives. This is driving a relatively aggressive small cell deployment and a moderately aggressive VoLTE plan. Verizon has been the most aggressive of the national players in deploying VoLTE, while (until recently) being the most hesitant to commit to significant small cell deployments.

6. Cash Management

6a. Capital Expenditures
None of this is cheap. It takes deep pockets to acquire spectrum and even deeper pockets to build it out. In a technology-driven industry, new network architectures will always require significant investments. As price wars constrain revenue, while demand for capacity continues its exponential growth, CapEx as a percent of revenue will likely become a significant strategic issue for all operators.

6b. Expense Management
Operating expenses and overall cash flow also can’t be overlooked. Growing demand for capacity and small cell deployments require increasing backhaul spend (although the shift to fiber for macro sites has helped bring that under control for most operators). But the biggest issue will likely continue to be the cost of providing smartphones and tablets to customers. As an illustration of how significant this cost is for a mobile operator, in Sprint’s 2013 Annual Report, the company reported equipment net subsidies of nearly $6B on service revenues of just over $29B (over 20%). In 2012, T-Mobile introduced equipment installment plan (EIP) financing as an alternative to subsidies and early in 2013 announced that it was eliminating all subsidies. Since then, the other three national operators have similarly introduced device financing. From an income statement perspective, this helps T-Mobile’s earnings since the device is accounted as an upfront sale, typically near full price. However, T-Mobile and their competitors have introduced zero-down zero interest (or close to it) terms, and they are discounting the monthly bill for the customer by roughly the same amount as their monthly equipment financing payment to keep the total monthly cost to the customer competitive with the traditional subsidized plans. The net result is that T-Mobile (and their competitors who have all followed suit) are taking on the financing risk without significantly improving their cash flow. For 2014, T-Mobile reported just over $22B in service revenues (a 17% increase over 2013). They also reported equipment sales of $6.8B (a 35% increase and 30% of service revenues). But, they also reported the cost of equipment sales at $9.6B (an increase of 38%) and they reported that they financed $5.8B in equipment sales (an increase of 75% over 2013 and 26% of service revenues). As of the end of 2014, T-Mobile had $5.1B in EIP receivables (an increase of 78%). That’s a lot of cash tied up in customer handsets. The strategy has worked in terms of attracting customers to switch to T-Mobile (which is why their competitors have had to respond), but it’s less clear that it’s been financially beneficial for the company in the long run. Verizon, for one, seems unconvinced and has been unenthusiastic about device financing. I believe this will continue to be an area of strategic deliberations at all mobile operators.

7. Plan Types
This shift from subsidized devices is also part of a disruption in how the industry views plan types. For decades, the industry focused on postpaid phone plans. These plans were subsidized, but the customer was locked in for two years, “ensuring” that the operator earned back their up-front investment in the device. Because operators, for the most part, managed this business with appropriate discipline, only prime credit customers could get a subsidized device and these tended to be fairly profitable customers. Those that didn’t qualify settled for a prepaid plan where they purchased the phone upfront at or near full price, which provided better cash flow early in the customer life, but less profitability over time. Eliminating subsides also eliminates the 2 year service plan (although the long term device financing still provides customer lock in) blurring much of the distinction between postpaid and prepaid. The number of people with multiple wireless devices is also increasing as we are carrying iPads and other tablets, as automakers are integrating wireless connectivity into the cars we drive, and as we move towards a day when virtually any product with a power supply will be wirelessly connected to the Internet. Different operators are taking different approaches to how to structure their plans to accommodate these changing customer behaviors within their business models, and I’m sure it will continue to be a topic for internal debate and discussion as the industry models evolve.

8. Commoditization
In many respects, wireless service is increasingly viewed as a commodity by customers. Operators continue to trumpet their network differentiation, but to the consumer there is generally the perception that all operators offer the same devices, in the same ways, and support those devices with networks that work reasonably well just about everywhere we go. Over the past 6 to 12 months, T-Mobile and Sprint have been very aggressive about reducing pricing or offering more for the same price, in a successful effort to take customers away from Verizon and AT&T. Those two larger operators have had to respond with lower prices or increased buckets of data. The operators may be denying it, but it sure looks like a commodity market to me, and I imagine that’s a discussion that’s happening in each operator’s strategic planning meetings.

9. Quad Play or Cord Cutting
For well over a decade, there’s been an ongoing strategic debate within the industry about whether a combined wireless and wireline bundle is critical to market success. At times, some players have decided that it will be and have taken actions, such as the strategic alliances between cable MSOs and wireless operators (Sprint, Clearwire, and Verizon), or advertising campaigns focused on integration across multiple screens (TV, computer, phone). So far, there’s little evidence that it really matters. Consumers take what landline voice, broadband, and video services they can get from the duopoly of cable provider or “telephone” provider and then they can choose from a competitive landscape for their mobile needs. For the last few years, it appears that none in the U.S. industry have seen any need to focus on a quad play future. In fact, the focus has been more on cord cutting and over-the-top players. However, in Europe, there’s a very different story playing out and it is driving massive industry consolidation. Especially while wrestling with the questions about commoditization, operators will once again question the benefits of a differentiating bundle.

10. Re-intermediation
Another common tactic to combat commoditization is to “move up the stack.” In the mobile industry, that would be “move back up the stack.” The introduction of the iPhone, followed by Android devices, led to the disintermediation of the mobile operator from much of the value chain. Prior to the iPhone, operators carefully managed their portfolio of phones, telling OEMs what features to build and it was the operators who largely drove demand for different devices. Operators collected the vast majority of revenues in the industry, directly charging the customer for the phone, the network service, any applications, any content, and any value added services (such as navigation or entertainment). The iPhone (and then Android) enabled better apps and content, provided a better marketplace for buying them, and provided an open connection to the Internet for a wide variety of over-the-top services. Although the operators had poorly managed the apps/content/services opportunity and therefore they didn’t have much “value add” revenue to lose, they clearly lost the opportunity to be more than just the underlying network. Over the past several years, the industry has tried to claw its way back up the stack. Operators pursued “open” strategies, introducing APIs for app developers and other tactics to try to be a “smart pipe” rather than just a “dumb pipe.” They have also tried to encroach on other industries by offering new mobile-enabled services, such as mobile payments and home security/automation. These efforts have not yet had meaningful success, although AT&T’s progress with Digital Life is promising. If operators want to escape the commodity “dumb pipe” trap, at some point they will need to figure out how to reclaim more of the stack.

Obviously, the mobile industry is dynamic and I expect these 10 topics to drive significant strategic decisions across all operators in the coming months and years. If you’d like to discuss any of these topics, drop me a note.

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Innovation and Commercialization

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For the past several weeks, I’ve been taking the online class Innovation and Collaboration, an MITx offering through edX. As with most good training, much of what the course is covering I already know, but what the instructors are providing are a number of frameworks that make it easier to fully grasp and apply in a systematic and repeatable manner.

The first of these frameworks is to separate the process of innovation and commercialization into three domains. In a cute way (perhaps to make it easier to remember), the three domains form the acronym M.I.T.:

  • Market: segments, applications, motivations, size, geography, decision factors, price, competition, etc.
  • Implementation: industry structure, supply chain/value chain, methods of production, cost, regulation, business model, distribution, intellectual property, etc.
  • Technology: physical technology, software, algorithms, ideas, etc.

In this framework, it’s important to note that Implementation is what brings the Technology and Market together.

The second framework is the high level observation that innovation, in all three domains, will incorporate a lot of “old” and perhaps some “new.” For example, technology innovation will involve combining lots of existing technology components perhaps with one or two new technology components, or combining them in an innovative way.

They then introduce frameworks for evaluating innovation and commercialization options within each domain. For example, if we look at the technology domain, we can identify each of the individual technology components. For each of those components, we can identify decisions that we can make about those components – the design factors. Some of those design factors can be constrained within the technology domain (e.g. to make the complete innovation actually work) but many will be influenced by and will influence the other two domains (e.g. market decision factors, manufacturability, cost, regulations, etc.).

Admittedly, there are aspects of the class that are frustrating, but I am finding many of their frameworks helpful and useful. There are still a few more weeks to go, so it will be interesting to see where they will lead us.

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MegaMobil and Startup Next

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Just before I left Sprint, the company held a “Startup Sprint” event at the Sprint Accelerator. Using the Startup Weekend methodology, about 50 Sprint employees spent 3 days forming into 11 startup teams, developing a value proposition, getting out of the building to talk to customers, and, at the end of the event, presenting to a panel of judges. Three finalists were recognized.

A couple of weeks later, those three finalists, plus the finalists from a Startup Sprint event earlier in the year, presented to a collection of Sprint and SoftBank executives. Amongst the SoftBank executives was Fumihiro Aono, SoftBank’s Senior Vice President for Personnel. Amongst other things, Aono-san champions SoftBank’s InnoVenture program, where employees are given the opportunity to present their innovative ideas and potentially launch new businesses. Two of the teams were identified as potentially being candidates for InnoVenture.

When I left Sprint, I had shared with the Sprint Accelerator team that I was interested in volunteer opportunities to learn more about the latest entrepreneurship tools and approaches. The six Startup Sprint finalists were invited to participate in a Startup NEXT program and I was asked to serve as facilitator. I said “sure,” but since I’d never even heard of Startup Next, I was a bit nervous about taking on the role. Thankfully, that very week, UP Global (the parent of Startup Weekend and Startup Next) had an event in Kansas City and I was able to meet with Dave Parker (Sr. VP of Programs and Products – including Startup NEXT) and Matt French (Director of the NEXT program). They made me feel much more capable of stepping into the role. Ari Kern, UP Global’s local senior manager, and Tina Peterson, the manager of the Sprint Accelerator, were also a huge blessing in getting ready for the program and for each week.

Of the six finalists, four regularly participated in the program, including the two with high potential. Each week we had a guest expert speaker on the topic for the week, had mentors from both inside of Sprint and the local startup community, coached the four teams, and closed each session with pitch practice. Sprint Vice President Kevin McGinnis owned the overall process and invited me to participate in calls and in-person review sessions with Sprint and SoftBank executives. At the end of the process, one of the teams, MegaMobil, was chosen to fly to Tokyo to compete in the InnoVenture competition. That is where all the hard work that we’d put in, preparing them to deliver a knock-em-dead pitch would be tested by fire. (Sorry, I can’t tell you much about MegaMobil’s business concept. I think it’s a winner, especially for helping mobile operators in countries where smartphone adoption is just now starting to take off. If you fit that category, I’d be happy to introduce you.)

Only 13 teams from around the world were invited to Tokyo for this competition. MegaMobile really wowed SoftBank Chairman Masa Son and was given the green light to pursue building the business over the next 3-6 months. They already have strong interest from a mobile operator in India as their first big customer. Congratulations team!

After the event, the leader of the team sent me an e-mail saying “Once again, thanks for all that you did to help us Russ – your coaching, feedback and insight was priceless.”

It was my pleasure!

MegaMobil and Startup Next Read More »

Introducing SDG Advisory Services

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Friday was officially my last day with Sprint. Over the weekend I updated my LinkedIn profile indicating the “end date” of my Sprint employment and listing a new “job” as Strategic Advisor for SDG Advisory Services. Thanks to everyone who sent me congratulations on the new “job.”

I’m not really looking for a new job. Although I don’t qualify to officially “retire” from Sprint, I’ve viewed my departure as my “retirement from corporate life.” God has blessed my family and I incredibly over the ~28 years since I graduated from Virginia Tech. He has filled my career with wonderful experiences as a corporate executive (Sprint and Williams), a consultant (TeleChoice), an entrepreneur (Digital Frontiers, Seek First Networks, Christian Homeschool Network), and a communicator (The Power of Mobility book, other book contributions, this blog, Christian Computing magazine, Business Reform magazine and BizNetDaily, Homeschool Enrichment magazine, Network World magazine, over a dozen conference keynotes and many other speaking opportunities, etc.).

I’ve made lots of mistakes along the way and unfortunately seen many more mistakes made by others. Those lessons have been incredibly valuable. I’ve also been blessed to do some things right and to watch others have impressive successes. Those too are wonderful lessons. Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to share those lessons with others, sometimes in formal and informal roles as a strategic advisor to companies, events, and organizations, and sometimes in formal and informal mentoring relationships with individuals. These have been some of the most rewarding opportunities I’ve had in my career.

The desire that God has placed on my heart is to focus on “giving back” out of my storehouse that He has filled with rich experiences, knowledge, and capabilities. I believe that tapping into this storehouse could be very valuable for the right businesses and I have created SDG Advisory Services especially for these types of opportunities. I think where I add the most value is in listening (about an opportunity or challenge), framing (helping craft a framework for evaluating options), and then shaping (the work that needs to be done to evaluate the options and make a decision). I think I’m also good at communicating, especially about the impact of technology innovations.

On the SDG Advisory Services website I’ve outlined four types of services for which companies may want to hire me:

  • Communications: Help customers and prospects understand the “big picture” of how innovations are changing their world by leveraging a successful communicator’s writing, speaking, or facilitation skills.
  • Two-Day Strategy Lab: Quickly develop a deep and focusing understanding of what is true about your business, your opportunity, and how to uniquely focus your strategy to achieve your long-term goals through a structured 2-day process.
  • Consultation Session: Uncover, clarify, and evaluate strategic options for specific business challenges and opportunities by engaging an experienced strategist who will ask the right questions and provide valuable perspectives.
  • Strategic Advisor: Improve your business decisions through an ongoing relationship with a proven, innovative business leader who can help shape and inform your strategic approach to business.

Most businesses have done a good job of building the right team to execute on their plan. They know more about the opportunity and their own capabilities than any outside expert could ever tell them. Sometimes, however, there’s a real need for help stepping back, framing the situation, and making the right decision with intentionality and focus, before moving forward. My desire isn’t to bill as many hours of consulting time as possible, but rather to have the biggest impact possible with the least amount of time and effort expended (for both you and me).

If you think I could help, drop me a note and we can chat about it.

Introducing SDG Advisory Services Read More »

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