Over the past few months, I’ve told the stories of various companies that have successfully launched new categories that fundamentally improved how industries operate and the world works. I thought it might be interesting to take a look at a company in the midst of launching a new category today.

Electronics can’t work without a healthy “heartbeat”. That heartbeat is in the form of clock signals that tell processors when to execute the next instruction, tell networking equipment when to send the next packet, and place highly precise timestamps on data so that it can be correctly interpreted and correlated by intelligent software. For nearly a century this heartbeat has most often been provided by a quartz crystal oscillator.

However, the Connected Intelligence revolution has placed tremendous new demands on electronics, demands that quartz crystals are struggling to meet:

– Everything is getting faster. 

– Today, as connected intelligence is built into every type of product, processors and networking (with their clock sources) are increasingly expected to operate reliably in harsh environments, with wide and rapid temperature swings, constant vibrations, and regular shocks. 

– Increasingly Artificial Intelligence-driven systems are making life-and-death decisions based on data collected from a variety of distributed systems. 

In 2003 Aaron Partridge and Markus Lutz saw the opportunity to build a better resonator and timing oscillator using MEMS technology. They decided to name their company SiTime because they were going to build timing products entirely using silicon (Si is the scientific symbol for silicon) and semiconductor processes. Like most disruptive technologies, their first products weren’t nearly as good as the best oscillators on the market. But, while quartz-based oscillators were barely improving (constrained by the industrial-age processes around physically cutting crystals), SiTime’s products were improving much more rapidly (benefitting from the computer-age/Moore’s Law advances in semiconductor technology).

Click here to read how, over the next two decades, SiTime continued to improve MEMS-based oscillators so that they are at least at parity with quartz oscillators on all the factors that have traditionally mattered most to engineers and significantly (2x or more) outperform on the factors that matter most in the Connected Intelligence revolution: size, resilience, reliability, and stability.

Today SiTime is in the midst of launching the Precision Timing category. Click here to read how they have:

1. Defined the problem, the solution, and the category.

2. Launched the category with a “lightning strike”.

3. Are continuing to lead and expand the category.

Are you redefining your industry? Do you need help defining and launching a new category? Reach out, maybe I can help.

Read the full story here.

I started ClearPurpose in 2020, making 2023 our 4th year. Each year I like to look back and see which of the ClearPurpose articles caught your attention. I specifically look at the full catalog and identify the articles that got the most attention in this calendar year.

It’s fascinating to me how balanced your favorite articles are. There are either 2 or 3 from each of the 4 years we’ve been publishing. There also are a range of different types of articles: 4 book reviews, 2 stories of companies working through strategic decisions, 2 articles about specific tools used in strategy work, and 2 articles more broadly covering strategic topics.

With that brief overview, here’s the countdown of your top 10 articles of 2023, with a brief snippet from each:

#10: Book Brief: Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution (2023)

Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution is full of insights and advice for entrepreneurs based on one man’s experience at some very successful startups. There’s a lot in it that I agree with and would probably give the same advice to companies I was advising. There are some things I disagree with and I would give counter-advice. As long as the reader takes the content for what it is — one man’s opinion — this can be a very valuable book for entrepreneurs.

#9: T-Mobile Finally Sells Sprint Fiber (2022)

According to Fierce Wireless, T-Mobile has agreed to sell the wireline business the company gained as part of its acquisition of Sprint to Cogent Communications for $1. In 2004, when I was director of strategic planning for the division of Sprint that managed the wireline business, we first seriously looked at selling this asset. Over the next 10 years in that role and as vice president of corporate strategy, we considered the possibility of selling Wireline several more times, even going so far as holding exploratory conversations with potential buyers.

#8: The Customer Network Strategy Generator (2021)

Some strategy tools are analysis focused. They collect and present information to help drive clarity for decision making (e.g. the BCG Growth Share Matrix). Some provide a framework for developing and representing strategic hypotheses (e.g. the Business Model Canvas). Still others can help identify resource and capability mismatches that can lead to strategic failures (e.g. the Diamond and Square Framework).

The Customer Network Strategy Generator, on the other hand, is more like a pilot’s pre-flight checklist, walking a strategist through the steps necessary to develop winning customer-facing strategies in the new digital age.

#7: What is a Business Operating System (2022)

I think the analogy of a computer operating system to a business operating system is valid. … With that analogy in mind, here’s my working definition of a business operating system.

A Business Operation System is the intentionally designed, consistent set of business practices that optimize business operations in alignment with the business’ strategy and culture.

#6: Book Brief: Competing in the Age of AI (2020)

Bottom line, I strongly recommend Competing in the Age of AI to anyone wanting to understand how the digital revolutions are transforming how firms operate and industries compete. As with any book, there are areas where I don’t completely agree with the authors, but in general, they provide perhaps the best treatment of the topic to date.

#5: Book Brief: The Discipline of Market Leaders (2020)

What It Teaches: Companies must choose to provide the best offering in the marketplace by excelling in one of three specific dimensions of value while maintaining threshold standards on the other two dimensions. Those three dimensions are best total cost, best product, and best total solution.
When To Use It: The Discipline of Market Leaders is all about competitive strategy. Review the key lessons in the book when preparing for discussions about competitive strategy and the follow-on planning around culture, organizational structure, core processes, management systems, and information technology necessary to achieve the chosen competitive strategy.

#4: Book Brief: HBRs 10 Must Reads on Strategy (2020)

What It Teaches: As the title implies, this book contains 10 classic articles on strategy from Harvard Business Review. Many of these articles became full length books, so to some extent, this one small book serves as a much quicker way to learn the key messages contained in some of the top strategy books.
When To Use It: The ten articles featured in this book roughly break down into five on strategy development and five on strategy execution. The topics covered range from industry analysis to vision development to management scorecarding to front line decisions and actions. So, in effect, the book covers the entire strategy lifecycle and may prove useful in many diverse situations. It’s certainly worth becoming familiar with the content once and then keeping it handy for quick reference when needed.

#3: What is Strategy (2022)

So, to hit on all the things we’ve talked about so far, a strategy:

Is a framework with depth and dimensionality to deal with uncertainty

Provides long-term vision

Defines the goal being pursued

Sets a direction forward

Identifies critical near-term objectives

Communicates all of the above clearly and coherently, and therefore

Enables decision making

#2: Nextel Helped Work Get Done (2023)

I like to describe the value that carriers like Nextel brought to pre-iPhone software developers as being in three buckets: bits, bills, and bags. First, Nextel provided the core data capabilities (bits) including the packet data network, the development platform, and the GPS data. Second, the company provided the business infrastructure (bills) including the “bill on behalf of” capability and frontline customer support. Third, Nextel served as a sales channel for the software companies (bags), both through the download site as well as through the growing Nextel salesforce, many of whom were focused on the specific industry verticals being targeted by the mobile business application developers.

#1: The Diamond-and-Square Framework (2021)

Eisenmann introduces the first tool this way: “how can an aspiring entrepreneur know whether she has actually identified an attractive opportunity and determine what types of resources are required to successfully capitalize on it? The diamond-and-square framework provides the answers.”

I’m glad that articles from years ago are still providing value to you, my readers. Every week I receive a report letting me know which articles received the most attention that week. These reports are typically dominated by my most recently published pieces, but it’s always a joy to see ones from deep in the archives receiving new attention. I’m glad that my book reviews are helpful, that the stories I share might be inspiring you in your strategic journeys, and that tools I’ve uncovered are helping you day by day.

Most of all, I’m thankful for you and your continued encouragement. Let me know if there are any topics you’d like to see me cover, and feel free to reach out at anytime if there are ways that I can help you as you wrestle with the hard decisions leaders are continuously facing.

So far this year I’ve published 52 articles at ClearPurpose.media. These can be grouped into four categories:

• Founder to CEO
• Category Making
• Book Reviews
• Miscellaneous Observations

Let me cover each of these topics separately:

Founder to CEO

In 2022 I began a series on the transition from startup founder to CEO of a growing enterprise. I wrapped up this series at the beginning of the year with four final articles:

Cash Matters! (2023–01–23)

Where Does Cash Come From? (2023–01–31)

Founder to CEO: Chief Cash Officer (2023–02–13)

Founder to CEO: A Recap (2023–02–20)

Category Making

The discipline of creating a new category also continued to be a major focus of mine in 2023 with 15 new articles on the topic:

Defining a New Category (2023–03–10)

Creating the Un-Carrier Category (2023–05–01)

How to Launch a New Category (2023–05–08)

Making the Case for Something Different (2023–05–15)

Your Category’s Grand Entrance (2023–05–22)

Owning Your Category (2023–05–29)

How Nvidia Created the GPU Category (2023–07–04)

When It Takes Collaboration to Create a Category (2023–09–05)

Collaborating to Create the Commercial Internet Category (2023–09–12)

A Coalition Creates the Competitive Communications Carrier Category (2023–09–28)

Non-Aggression as the Key to Establishing the Frame Relay Category (2023–10–11)

Nextel Helped Work Get Done (2023–10–24)

How Tech Giants Teamed Up to Establish 4G (2023–11–7)

How Salesforce Collaborated with Startups to Create the SaaS Category (2023–11–28)

How Tech Titans Teamed To Create the Gen-AI Category (2023–12–05)

Book Reviews

This year I wrote 29 book reviews. That included a burst of reviews written in the middle of the year revisiting classic business books I’ve read in prior years but had never reviewed. If you’re looking for your next book to read, I recommend quickly purusing this list — there’s something for almost everyone here:

Book Brief: Unleash Your Cash Flow Mojo (2023–01–10)

Book Brief: Financial Intelligence (2023–01–18)

Book Brief: Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution (2023–02–08)

Book Brief: The Ecosystem Economy (2023–03–14)

Book Brief: Unwired (2023–03–28)

Book Brief: Soul Work (2023–04–03)

Book Brief: Switch (2023–04–10)

Book Brief: Unconventional Business (2023–04–24)

Book Brief: The Unconventional Leader (2023–06–05)

Book Brief: The Design of Business (2023–06–12)

Book Brief: REWIRED (2023–06–20)

Book Brief: Strategy in the Digital Age (2023–06–27)

Book Brief: Leadership Not By The Book (2023–07–11)

Book Brief: Business Model Generation (2023–07–19)

Book Brief: The Lean Startup (2023–07–25)

Book Brief: Wireless Nation (2023–07–31)

Book Brief: Madison Avenue Makeover (2023–08–07)

Book Brief: Good to Great (2023–08–15)

Book Brief: Going On Offense (2023–08–22)

Book Brief: Every Good Endeavor (2023–08–29)

Book Brief: There’s No Such Thing As Business Ethics (2023–09–19)

Book Brief: Whatever You Do (2023–10–17)

Book Brief: Playing to Win (2023–10–04)

Book Brief: Startup Nation (2023–10–31)

Book Brief: Product Roadmaps Relaunched (2023–11–14)

Book Brief: Behind the Cloud(2023–11–21)

Book Brief: The Agile Pocket Guide (2023–12–13)

Book Brief: The Signal and the Noise (2023–12–19)

Miscellaneous Observations

Surprisingly, there were only three articles this year that didn’t fit into one of the above categories:

My 10 Most Referenced Books (2023–01–02)

The Semiconductor Industry 101 (2023–03–23)

 “Ready Golf” (2023–04–17)

To see a more complete representation of my writing on different topics, visit my website.

I welcome any input on topics I should cover heading into 2024!

The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silverexplains how data is used to make predictions in many different fields; why some of those have failed to show meaningful advances in accuracy; why a few have; and what we can learn from both the successes and failures. The book is not an easy read. There’s nothing in the book that is overly hard to understand, at least not when Silver explains it. The problem is that he covers such a broad landscape and he does so in such great detail that the overall experience is somewhat overwhelming.

Even with being more than a decade old, The Signal and the Noise is still worth reading. There are a few helpful over-arching concepts that Silver introduces that will continue to be relevant, a bunch of real-world examples that demonstrate those concepts, and a few general suggestions that will continue to be helpful as experts in any field seek to use data to make hard predictions about the future.

In my full review linked below, I briefly describe three over-arching concepts: signal/noise, uncertainty/probability/confidence, and Bayes theorem. If you want to know what each of these concepts reference, click the link below. These three concepts are foundational to the book, but they are mostly presented through a series of detailed examples from different industries. The author has professionally applied data analysis in a variety of different fields. He started his career as a pricing analyst for KPMG, built a system to predict the performance of Major League Baseball players (which he sold to Baseball Prospectus), became a professional gambler, accurately predicted the 2008 presidential and Senate elections, and turned that into a successful business called FiveThirtyEight (which he sold to Disney/ESPN/ABC). 

Each chapter in The Signal and the Noise digs into a different domain and the challenges and opportunities for applying data analysis to make accurate predictions in that domain. I can’t possibly do justice in summarizing these detailed analyses, but I can tell you the domains covered: economic forecasting, political punditry, baseball analysis, weather forecasting, earthquake prediction, health epidemic management, chess and poker playing, stock market investing, climate change warning, geo-political intelligence.

The final chapter in The Signal and the Noise is titled “Conclusion” and helps the reader to pull together the important lessons taught throughout the book. “This book is less about what we know than about the difference between what we know and what we think we know. It recommends a strategy so that we might close that gap. The strategy requires one giant leap and then some small steps forward. The leap is into the Bayesian way of thinking about prediction and probability.” The small steps are best summarized by the sub-section titles that follow in the chapter: think probabilistically, know where you’re coming from, try, and err.

Read my full review of The Signal and the Noise here.

The Agile Pocket Guide by Peter Saddington is a helpful guide for experienced software developers who have been asked to lead their first Agile project.

The book is roughly broken into four parts. 

Chapters 1–4 teach general principles that will serve the leader well and each chapter ends with a list of three “Leader Questions” aimed at helping the reader internalize the lessons taught.

Chapters 5–16 get more into the actual tools and processes used in Scrum. The chapters include these tools, processes, and concepts, and sometimes include examples from the author’s experience. Each chapter ends with a list of three questions for either the leader or the entire team.

Chapters 17–24 get into the dynamics of the Agile team (and its leader) interacting with other parts of the business. Each chapter ends with a specific “Example Case” from the author’s personal experience.

Chapters 25–28 deal with Kaizen at the personal, team, product, and cultural levels. Kaizen is a Japanese term roughly meaning “continuous improvement”. Each of these chapters is primarily a long list of things that leaders, teams, and organizations can focus on to integrate the Kaizen concept into how they operate.

Bottom line, The Agile Pocket Guide is written by an experienced Agile practitioner based on coaching he’s provided to many who are new to the framework. It serves as a broad-ranging introduction to many of the terms, concepts, and practices that a leader of an Agile team will need to learn to become successful. If you’ve been asked to lead an Agile team, this short book might prove helpful to you.

Read the full review here.

OpenAI has been in the news lately for how its unique corporate governance model and conflicting agendas caused a bitter split. In contrast, the company’s foundation in 2015 was the result of a unique collaboration between some of the most powerful people in the tech industry working together with a clear shared purpose. In 8 short years OpenAI has dramatically demonstrated to the world the capabilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI), created the Generative AI category, and captured $tens of billions in value.

The article linked below tells this story. Here’s a little teaser…

In the years leading up to the formation of OpenAI, the stage was being set for the emergence of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Leading technology thinkers began to both get excited about the potential benefits of these advances and become worried about their potential negative implications. In December 2015 Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, Greg Brockman, Jessica Livingston, AWS, and Infosys committed $1B to form OpenAI, a non-profit artificial intelligence research company whose goal was to “advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.” The company promised to share their work with the world. Thanks to the unique combination of individuals involved, the organization’s mission, and the funds available to pay competitive salaries, OpenAI was able to recruit top AI researchers.

During 2016 and 2017, the OpenAI team made significant progress in their research. As promised, the products of these efforts were released as Open Source software. They also shared their research extensively through published papers. In 2017, the Google Brain team published a paper titled “Attention is All You Need” which introduced the concept of Generative Pre-Trained Transformers (GPTs). The OpenAI team also began working on GPTs.

While OpenAI had done a great job of building one of the most impressive research teams in the world, they were competing to retain those employees with companies like Google who could offer stock-based compensation. In March 2019, OpenAI announced that they were shifting from a non-profit to a “capped profit” model in order to be able to take direct investments to fund their computing needs. In July of that year Microsoft announced a $1B investment in the company as part of a broader partnership.

Most new categories involve a new approach to solving an old problem. The world embraces the new category because the new approach dramatically improves on old approaches, is radically different — not just better (and therefore is defensible), can easily be adopted by the target users, and finds some way to get users’ attention. 

The Generative AI (Gen-AI) category solves the very old and very broad problem of creating something new. Humans by their very nature are creative. God made us that way. Over the years, men have invented tools to help those being creative. But the greatest tool we’ve had in the creative process is that of collaboration — working with other humans to make our creative works better.

As standalone creators, Gen-AI bots are mediocre at best, but they truly shine when collaborating with a flesh-and-blood human creator. The problem that this new category solves is that it provides an always-available, untiring, patient, affordable, infinitely knowledgeable, reasonably skilled (and yet still imperfect) collaborator for our creative endeavors.

So, what did OpenAI do to create the category? Category creation typically follows three major steps: 1) Define the problem, the solution, and the category. 2) Launch the category, often with a “lightning strike”. 3) Own the category by continuing to lead in capability, mind-share, and market-share.

Read the full story here.

The Salesforce story may be the most popular one used to describe the process of creating a new industry category. Before Salesforce.com, software was bought as a “product”. Salesforce redefined the industry so that now software is bought as a “service”. The company truly deserves tremendous credit for changing an entire industry by creating a new category, but a big part of why they were successful doing so is that they realized they couldn’t do it alone.

At the beginning of 1999, few people would say that the software industry was broken. Computers and software had fundamentally changed how people and businesses work, especially following the introduction of the IBM PC in the early 1980s. These changes made workers and industries more productive and contributed to increasing quality of life. 

But then the Web happened. Companies like Google and Amazon raised everyone’s expectations of how things should work. You need something? You search for it online and find it in minutes or seconds. Sure, if it’s a physical product, you might need to wait a few days for it to show up on your doorstep, but everything became very simple. If it works that way for websites or books, why couldn’t it work for software?

That’s what Marc Benioff wanted to know. In his book Behind the Cloud, Marc wrote “My vision was to make software easier to purchase, simpler to use, and more democratic without the complexities of installation, maintenance, and constant upgrades.” In 1998 Marc started actively pursuing his vision. He recruited a team to start building the product and wrote a business plan. On March 8, 1999 the three-person team started working in a one-bedroom apartment next door to Benioff’s home. They called the company Salesforce.com to reflect the problem they were solving (SFA) and the new Internet-centric model they were introducing. In July, Benioff quit his Oracle job and focused entirely on Salesforce.

By 2003 the company had edged out from SFA into the broader category of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Salesforce had successfully created the category of SFA/CRM Software as a Service (SaaS), but it hadn’t achieved Benioff’s vision of completely redefining the software industry. Even as a publicly-traded rapidly growing corporation Salesforce simply would never have enough resources to accomplish that on their own.

Benioff developed a new vision and a new direction for the company. Salesforce would not only provide Software as a Service (SaaS), but also a Platform as a Service (PaaS) on which others could develop software applications. Benioff wrote “creating a platform offered a way to resolve our biggest problem: customers were clamoring for more applications, and we didn’t have the resources to build everything ourselves. Further, we knew that outside developers needed a better way to create applications. There was so much that was truly painful about the process, and the heavy lifting required to build salesforce.com was fresh in my mind.”

Today, I think it’s safe to say that the SaaS category is now firmly established and the industry has been transformed. Perhaps this transition was inevitable, but Salesforce was able to accelerate and benefit from the creation of the broad SaaS category because it chose to collaborate with others. 

Read my full telling of the Salesforce story here.

Are you in the midst of creating a new category? Reach out if you’d like to brainstorm approaches to accelerate and de-risk the process.

Behind the Cloud by Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler tells the exciting story of a high-growth technology startup from initial concept through and beyond IPO, structured in a way that other founders and leaders can easily learn lessons from salesforce.com’s challenges and successes. It’s a fun read and I believe that any business leader would learn something applicable to their current situation by reading this book.

The authors have done a masterful job of melding two different approaches to writing a book like this. The subtitle of the book is “the untold story of how Salesforce.com went from an idea to a billion-dollar company — and revolutionized an industry.” Normally such a “story” book would be written chronologically, telling the step-by-step, week-by-week, month-by-month, year-by-year story of the company’s progress. However, I’m guessing that Benioff’s passion was to tell the story in the form of lessons learned, and such a “teaching” book is more useful if similar lessons are grouped together thematically. Somehow the authors managed to organize the lessons thematically, but order the themes so that the story largely unfolds chronologically as you read from the first theme through to the ninth theme. Doing so maintained the power of “story” (beginning, middle, end (at least as of 2009)) while also delivering the power of “teaching”.

Specifically, the book is broken into 111 “plays” — specific things the Salesforce founders and team did, and that others can adopt. These are broken down into 9 thematic “parts” or “playbooks”: Start-Up, Marketing, Events, Sales, Technology, Corporate Philanthropy, Global, Finance, and Leadership. Each playbook contains 10–20 plays. Each play is typically 2–5 pages long, includes very specific stories from the history of Salesforce, and generalizes what the authors learned into a lesson that could be applied by other companies.

No reader will immediately benefit from all the lessons learned, but almost any business leader will find something useful for their current situation amongst the 111 lessons shared. If you’re looking for an interesting book to read that might benefit your ability to lead your business, this could be a great choice.

Read the full review here.

Product Roadmaps Relaunched by C. Todd Lombardo, Bruce McCarthy, Evan Ryan, and Michael Connors is a guide for those involved in new product development, especially product managers responsible for setting the strategy and guiding the development of products. It teaches a more strategic way to use product roadmaps — providing clarity and a common understanding while avoiding over committing or getting into details more appropriately managed elsewhere.

I’ve been involved in product development in one form or another for the past few decades. Managing the process has become more structured and scientific over those years, but the most significant change has been the adoption of elements of design thinking, lean startup, and agile development. While business decision making has become increasingly data-driven and algorithmic, the reality is that what the market wants and needs is still fairly mysterious. Product developers must find a healthy balance between satisfying the desires of decision makers to predict what will happen and when, with maintaining the ability to learn what will actually succeed before rushing a new product to market. Product Roadmaps Relaunched suggests an approach for achieving this balance.

The first chapter of the book is primarily structured around common problems that are addressed by the book’s new approach to product roadmaps:

• Nobody understands why things are on the roadmap
• You are shipping a lot but not making progress
• Executives and customers demand commitments
• Marketing and sales are not selling what you are making
• Customers aren’t excited about your new features
• Your stakeholders and customers expect a firm commitment on dates for your product releases
• Time spent estimating design and development efforts takes time away from actually implementing them
• Your team looks at the roadmap as if it were a project plan listing when features will be released

In the second chapter, the authors define the key components of a product roadmap, including a product vision, business objectives, product themes, high level timeframes, and a disclaimer that all of it is liable to change at any time. The next eight chapters walk through the process of developing this new type of product roadmap. The final chapter provides readers with guidance in how to help their organizations begin to implement this new approach to product roadmapping. 

Read the full review here.

Unlike some examples where an industry giant pulls together a coalition of startups to help establish a new category, the story of the establishment of the 4G category is one where a small startup (Clearwire) pulled together a coalition of industry giants (Intel, Motorola, Google, Sprint Nextel, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks). 

In 2004 Craig McCaw acquired Clearwire, a collection of assets, most importantly a collection of spectrum licenses in the EBS and BRS bands around 2.5 GHz. One of McCaw’s other companies (NextNet) had already been working on technology to deliver 4G-like capabilities. He made NextNet a subsidiary of Clearwire to focus on building the network equipment the company would need and approached Intel about becoming a strategic partner. 

Intel largely missed the opportunity for its chips to be included in cellphones. However, early in 2003 the company launched a strategic initiative with a chipset called Centrino that would add WiFi to laptops and other mobile computers. The success of the Centrino initiative to establish WiFi as the ubiquitous standard for wireless local area networks encouraged the company to pursue making WiMAX the ubiquitous standard for wireless metropolitan area networks. In October 2004, Intel invested an undisclosed (but “significant”) amount of money in Clearwire and began working with NextNet on deploying pre-standard WiMAX.

During 2005 the company launched service in its first 25 markets covering about 5 million people. In 2006 Intel invested an additional $600M into Clearwire. Motorola became a second strategic partner by investing in Clearwire and acquiring NextNet. These three companies each brought critical elements to the table in making the push for WiMAX to become the de facto standard for 4G wireless. By 1Q2007 Clearwire had signed up 285,000 subscribers. In its initial 25 markets, more than 10% of homes passed had signed up for Clearwire service and many of those markets had achieved cash-flow break even. Those results were impressive and proved the concept of 4G-like wireless broadband, but they were far from significant enough to establish the 4G category. The company would need more help.

A truly mobile service has to work wherever you go and it has to stay connected even when you are traveling at highway speeds. Fixing these problems would require a lot more spectrum and a lot more money. Sprint and Nextel had each separately acquired EBS/BRS bands in about a third of the country each. The two companies had merged in 2005. In 2008 Sprint Nextel announced the combination of its 4G business with Clearwire to form the new Clearwire. The new venture received Sprint Nextel’s 2.5 GHz spectrum (resulting in a nationwide footprint), and $3.2 billion in cash from Intel, Google, and three of the largest cable companies.

The deal brought more than just spectrum and cash. The third missing component to firmly establishing the 4G category was a marketing and distribution strategy. The new Clearwire would build and operate the 4G network, and Sprint Nextel, the cable companies, and other wholesale customers would sell the capacity on that network to their customers.

By the end of 2010 Clearwire’s network covered 119 million people, their subscriber base had grown to 4.4 million, and revenue had grown to $180M in the fourth quarter alone. Clearwire and its allies had successfully created the 4G category. Within a few years almost no one would consider buying a phone that didn’t have 4G technology. Unfortunately, category making can be hard and expensive. LTE ended up winning the technology war over WiMAX. Clearwire ran out of money and was acquired by Sprint. Sprint itself struggled to survive and eventually was bought by T-Mobile. However, the core capabilities and assets that started in Clearwire continue to provide mobile broadband leadership for T-Mobile. 

It’s impossible to know the “what if’s” around 4G if Clearwire hadn’t led the creation of a powerful collection of tech giants to establish the category. We will never know because Clearwire and its allies did make true mobile broadband available at the same time (2007–2010) that Americans were falling in love with the smartphones that needed it most.

Read the full story here.