The Innovation Imperative

In writing this issue's cover story on innovation, I ran across a very apt comparison of the post-deregulation airline industry and today's telecom industry. In the airlines, new competitors and existing players competed not on who had the best planes but on service and business model innovation: things like frequent flyer programs, reservation systems, hub-and-spoke route efficiencies, etc.

That same innovation challenge faces the telecom industry today, which we catalog in great detail in our cover story. How should telecom companies approach innovation? Should it happen at the corporate level? Bubble up from the bottom? Which companies are making the biggest bets and having the greatest successes?

It's an at times staggering challenge. While our industry has a long, storied history of technology innovation, service and business model innovation is relatively new. But complacency brings with it the risk of becoming the telecom equivalent of Braniff or Eastern in the airline industry — companies that died because they could not adapt to the new business and service models their customers demanded.

Telecom operators are well aware of the challenge. According to a recent study of telco executives commissioned by HP, 77% said innovation was a top priority for their business. But only 32% said they believed their companies were prepared “to cull innovation and turn it into meaningful products and services.”

Bridging that gap is job no. 1 for telecom service providers today. What makes it more challenging — but also more exciting — is that unlike the airline industry, which basically stayed in the business of moving people from point A to point B, telecom has vast new opportunities before it. Video services. Mobile apps. Business services. Cloud computing. Vertical opportunities like smart grids or telehealth. And much, much more.

It's that innovation opportunity that Connected Planet was launched to help document. As we put out this, our third issue, we hope that our vision is becoming ever clearer. We believe strongly that telecom service providers are not only at the center of our publication, but at the center of this communications future. But there are new and additional vistas to cover, new participants that bear watching and new audiences to help bring together.

We believe that's our innovation imperative — to document where this industry is headed and to do it with the type of innovative new products, services and business models our readers and customers require. You'll see much more from us in the coming months as our Connected Planet vision continues to roll out, including new Web innovations, improvements to our print publication and what we believe are innovative — and demanded — new products to serve our market of tomorrow.

A final note: Connected Planet's Editor-in-Chief Carol Wilson is leaving us as of this issue. Carol and I worked together at Telephony back when there were still Bell companies, and I've enjoyed working with her more recently in both of our second go-arounds in these pages. We wish her the very best.