BROADBAND LIBRARY — SPRING 2006

Jim Carroll, Futurist

Jim Carroll, futurist,

trends and innova-

tion expert is the

author of What I

Learned from Frogs in

Texas: Saving Your

Skin with Forward-

Thinking Innovation.

He is a frequent

speaker at global

events, with a client

list that includes

Motorala, the BBC,

Verizon,

DaimlerChrysler, the

U.S. Army Corps of

Engineers, the

National Rural

Telecom Cooperative

and the Swiss

Innovation forum. He

has provided his

If there are three key words thatshould carry broadband orga-nizations and the peoplewithin them into thefuture, it is these: agility,innovation and execu-

tion.Today, as telecom, cable,

wireless and satellite networksmerge into a converged, accessi-ble-anywhere data cloud, we arebeing confronted by absolutely furi-ous rates of change, and you need anincredible amount of agility to beable to respond.

And in this era in which newdevelopments and technology arecoming to the market faster thanever before, everyone must becomean innovator, whether it be withnew business models, skills partner-ships or customer solutions.

And execution, because in an erain which everyone is becoming acompetitor often offering the samecommodity services, it will be excel-lence of delivery that will provide for distinction:excellence in customer service, product lineup andthe ability to respond instantly to the rapidly chang-ing demands of the consumer.

Step back for a moment and think about the keytrends that are driving broadband today, and whythese three traits will be critical to future success.

Hyper-innovation dominatesInnovation has moved from the corporate to the

collective, a trend that is causing absolutely furiousrates of discovery. Fifteen years ago, the exchangeof new ideas, research and scientific advance in theworld of cable, technology and telecom occurred ata rather leisurely pace, through conferences, jour-nals and publications. Today, we find ourselves inthe midst of a global infinite idea loop, in whichnew ideas, inventions and innovations are sharedfaster than ever before in countless numbers ofonline forums, discussions, blogs and other collabo-rative efforts. The pace of R&D and discovery hasforever changed at this global collaborative net-

work, as has an eternal discussion aboutwhat comes next. The result is that

no one can hope to define thefuture anymore — the best youcan do is simply to plug into thefuture that is being developedall around you, and learn howto profit from it.

Furious rates of scientificadvance dominate our world

The impact of the infinite idealoop is such that scientific discoveriesare now occurring to a degree neverbefore seen, with the result that thelast 10 years of rapid technologydevelopment will seem like a slowtrain ride in retrospect, compared towhat comes next. And indeed, wewill witness significant new innova-tions that continue to boost technol-ogy performance and bandwidth. AtIBM and elsewhere, opticalresearchers are learning how to slowthe speed of light to 30 miles a sec-ond, in order to develop the next

generation of optical router. Next-generation storagecompanies are dealing with concepts that involvestoring three data bits in every single molecule, adevelopment that could make today’s 4GB flashmemory-based devices look like the the 640kBmemory PCs of yesterday in comparison. It’s only amatter of time before VoIP is built into every laptopat the chip level. How do we ensure that we’vehitched our train to everything that is going on?

Bandwidth capacity and demand is set to explodeThis rate of scientific advance is such that a

world of yottabits and zetabits is going to arrivefaster than you might think, which makes the cur-rent debate over the question of whether the speedto the home will be 100 Mbps or 300 Mbps seemkind of quaint in retrospect. At the beginning of the21st century, it would have taken a bundle of opti-cal fibers the size of the New York subway systemto build a network of yottabit capacity. Yet you canexpect that bundle to get smaller and smaller every

Guest Author IAre We Thinking “Fast” Enough?

No one can hope to define

the future anymore — the

best you can do is simply

to plug into the future that

is being developed all

around you, and learn how

to profit from it.

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BROADBAND LIBRARY — SPRING 2006

day as we figure out how to squeeze more lightbits through increasingly sophisticated opticalswitches. Add to this the continual capacityimprovements coming to cable, and the fascinat-ing developments in increasing the speed andreach of wireless networks, and you’ve got roomfor a bandwidth explosion. Will we use it?Definitely so: with digital cameras having justentered our world, we are alreadytaking 80 billion pictures a year,and are sharing them online. Oncewe all start sharing video, band-width will take off in ways thatare unimaginable.

Product lifecycles disappearThings are happening so fast

that some industries are beginningto witness the end of the concept of the productlifecycle. Some digital camera manufacturers nowknow that their latest product might last only sixmonths at best before being made obsolete by thenext generation of product. Self-obsolesence isnow a business strategy. Apple chose to stop man-ufacturing its bestselling iPod Mini because of aseismic technology shift with flash memory, andintroduced the wildly successful iPod Nanoinstead. Cell phone manufacturers continue tosee fascinating new developments with theessence of the machine at every single juncture— how long before we’ve got 1,024x768 resolu-tion with a camera video phone? Hyper-innova-tion means that you must plan for tomorrow’smarket right now — and that market might lastonly six months at best. I think we all should goback and look at our old marketing textbook, andin particular, the chapter on product lifecycles.Read that chapter — and then realize that thisbusiness concept simply does not exist anymore.

New competitors will continue to emerge at a furious pace overnight

Rapid innovation and technology developmentmeans that new competitors can now come intoa marketplace and cause fundamental, significantand longlasting change at the drop of a hat. Lookat Skype: it started from a simple premise thatpeople would love the idea of free telephone call-ing through the Internet. When eBay bought thecompany for a price in excess of $3 billion, peo-ple finally realized they were now witnessing a

time when legacy carriers were potentially threat-ened by small, nimble, brash, take no prisonercompetitors. Have you ever looked at Xbox Live,and realized that it’s simply a vehicle for voice-over-IP? New competitors are everywhere, andthey are rushing into every marketplace whenev-er they can.

Bandwidth continues to commoditize, and service,integration and delivery are key

In an era of increased competi-tion, decreased customer loyalty,hyper-churn and other challenges,every business plan requires regu-lar radical, and instant surgery.Challenging assumptions and elimi-nating ingrained corporate habits

will be the key to responding to rapid change.That’s why agility, execution and customer ser-vice are the key success factors that can be adopt-ed in order to stay above the fray.

Skill agiity is keyRapidly evolving technology is resulting in an

increasing shortage of critical skills — and thosebroadband companies who can reskill their staffwill find that it becomes a critical success factor.If we’re doing VoIP, we’ve got to be able to transi-tion the skills of someone who understands thecable plant, so that they understand how thearchitecture of that plant can affect packet laten-cy. There are huge new skills demands evolvingout there, and we’ve got to ensure we are on topof them. Give me a cable company that thinks it’sbusiness as usual, and I’ll give you a companythat just doesn’t get how rapidly things are chang-ing out there. Give me a cable company that isdoing radical skills retraining, and I’ll give youone that gets it.

Generational mindset changeWhen the Napster generation takes over the

airwaves, so to speak, we’re in for some interest-ing developments! Not to be disrespectful, but therate of change is really going to take off as thecurrent change-resistant generation of babyboomers relinquishes control. When they leave,the next generation of uber-wired kids is going totake over. And the simple fact is: they view theworld in a different way.

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insight in more than

600 articles and in

more than 3,000

interviews on radio,

television and in

print, with media

exposure and inter-

views with ABC

News, INC, Fast

Company, Texas

Meetings and Events,

the South China

Morning Post (Hong

Kong), American

Way, CEO Magazine

Hungary, Association

LEADERSHIP, the

National Post and

PROFIT, and more.

He currently is work-

ing on his latest

book, The Masters of

Business Imagina-

tion: Why It’s the

Only Degree You’ll

Ever Need. This arti-

cle is based on his

keynote remarks in

January 2006 to the

Society of Cable

Telecommunications

Engineers Emerging

Technologies confer-

ence, held in Tampa,

FL.

Rapidly evolving

technology is resulting in

an increasing shortage of

critical skills.